By Theodore Shoebat
Great Britain has been bombing ISIS and has struck their oil fields. As we read from one report:
Britain’s Ministry of Defense says its jets struck at oil facilities in Syria, hours after Parliament voted for Britain to join allies in bombarding the Islamic State group.
The British contribution forms only a tiny part of US-led “Operation Inherent Resolve”, which has been bombing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria for more than a year with hundreds of aircraft.
The two leaders also “reiterated that all countries are welcome to join the existing coalition, if their political and military objectives in Syria are consistent with those of the coalition”.
British Tornado jets took off from the Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri in Cyprus before dawn on Thursday, hours after the British parliament voted 397-223 to support Prime Minister David Cameron’s plan to extend air strikes from Iraq to Syria.
Although these were the UK’s first strikes against IS in Syria, the United States, France and Russian Federation have been carrying out a campaign against the extremists in both Iraq and Syria for some time – resulting in a combined total of 8,573 against the group.
Britain, a former colonial power, retains two sovereign military bases in Cyprus.
Britain has been extremely reluctant to take military action in Syria, but quickly shifted its attitude in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris on November 13 that left at least 130 people dead.
Other European officials also appealed for a joint global response. Diplomats at an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe conference in Belgrade said Thursday that only a unified front could be effective in countering the threat of terrorism.
The Russian and Turkish foreign ministers met in Belgrade on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting – the first senior-level meeting since the incident – but the exchange was frosty. On Wednesday Russia made it personal, saying Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s family was directly profiting from Islamic State oil smuggling. We must stop this terrorist gang of murderers. The strikes destroyed machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons, the statement said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said he offered his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, condolences over the death of a Russian pilot, adding: “It would be unrealistic to say that the problem has been overcome”.