But last night the Tornados, operating from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, conducted reconnaissance flights over Syria, something they had been doing anyway before the Commons vote.
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The MoD said the RAF’s accuracy record in Iraq shows the “rigorous targeting protocols United Kingdom forces observe” and are adhering to those same principles when taking action over Syria.
Fallon said the UK Ministry of Defence would be assessing the damage done by the bombing later, but the aim was to strike “a very real blow on the oil and revenue on which Daesh (another name for ISIS) depends”.
The German Cabinet approved the military support mission against ISIS in Syria this week.
Earlier, David Cameron insisted conducting air strikes against IS in Syria would help to bring a political settlement to the country. Just in the south, we are over 35,000 fighters.
“We should answer the call from our allies”.
He added: “What military action will also assist with is altering the current balance of power on the ground such that we have a greater chance of being able to work out a political settlement that does not involve Isil, and may help build an understanding among the worldwide coalition that President Assad’s rule must before long also come to a close”.
The Conservative Party leader was repeatedly asked to apologise by Opposition Labour MPs for comments he reportedly made to fellow Conservative MPs on Tuesday, asking them not to vote with “a bunch of terrorism sympathisers”. “I am not pretending that the answers are simple, the situation in Syria is incredibly complex”.
However, there were bitter recriminations in the Labour Party after Wednesday’s vote exposed the depths of the divisions within its ranks. Cameron lost a similar vote in 2013, but argued that the Paris attacks, the destruction of a Russian plane over Egypt and bombings in Turkey and Lebanon demonstrated that the threat represented by the brutal Islamist regime could not be contained to the Middle East and represented a tangible threat to British security.
“We are going to need to be patient and persistent”. He added: “Isis are devils and we should attack them and this attack is a positive step, but what is important is the strategy of these attacks”.
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The 66 Labour MPs who voted with the government included shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn, whose powerful appeal for actions against IS “fascists” drew a round of applause from MPs on both sides of the House.
