MoD confirms that oilfields were targeted by four RAF planes continuing strategy of trying to cut off terrorist group’s access to sources of funding

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Britain has warned that the campaign to defeat Islamic State would “not be short or simple”, after RAF jets carried out a second wave of airstrikes on terrorist targets in Syria.

The RAF strikes came 24 hours after the first UK planes bombed Isis fighters in the stronghold of Syria, overnight on Thursday. MPs voted for military action on Wednesday.



The Ministry of Defence said that oilfields in the country were again targeted, continuing the strategy of attempting to cut off the terrorist group’s access to sources of funding.

Typhoon fighter jets and unmanned Reapers were used for the first time on Friday night, alongside Tornado GR4s from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. The Typhoons carry the same Paveway IV precision-guided bombs as the Tornados.

Speaking during a visit to RAF Akrotiri the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, told about 200 military personnel that they were taking on Isis with the backing of both the government and the people of Britain.

“We face a new kind of enemy that makes no demands, takes no hostages, doesn’t want to negotiate. It’s not what we do that they oppose, it’s what we are. We are people who choose our government, accept a rule of law, tolerate other religions. It’s because of who we are in Britain and the west that we have this particular death cult,” he said.

Fallon added: “Nobody likes strikes, nobody likes warfare, but when you’re dealing with people who are not negotiating with you but simply want to kill as many westerners or Brits as possible, then you have to use force.



“We are going to use force against them in the headquarters, their command and control, their logistics, but also in the infrastructure that supports them. We are going to do our very best to minimise civilian casualties.”

Two Tornados flew an armed reconnaissance patrol over eastern Syria overnight to gather intelligence on terrorist activity. A second pair of GR4s patrolled over western Iraq to give air support to Iraqi forces fighting Isis in and around Ramadi.



“A terrorist sniper team opened fire from a compound on Iraqi troops, but was silenced by a direct hit from a Paveway IV guided bomb,” the MoD said.

US central command said coalition military forces conducted 11 strikes in Syria on Friday using both fighter jets and drones, as well as 12 strikes in Iraq against Isis targets.



Activists in the province of Deir Ezzor, most of which is held by Isis except for a small area under regime control, said that coalition airstrikes targeted oil fields in Syria’s eastern desert this morning.



“Plumes of smoke are still rising from the area,” the activist group Deir Ezzor is Being Slaughtered Silently said earlier today. The group documents Isis crimes in the province clandestinely.

The activists said the airstrikes targeted the oil fields in the Shaitat desert and al-Bahra near the Iraqi border. The US-led coalition, which Britain has joined, has in recent weeks and months increasingly targeted Isis oil facilities to stem the lucrative black market trade.

The airstrikes have severely reduced the group’s oil output. It is estimated that Isis sold between 100,000 and 125,000 barrels of oil a day from Iraq before April this year. That figure has declined to between 10,000 to 15,000 barrels a day from Iraq and 40,000 to 45,000 barrels a day from Syria after April 2015, at between $10 and $15 a barrel.

Meanwhile, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, suggested on Saturday that removing Bashar al-Assad as president of Syria may no longer necessary ahead of a successful political transition in the country.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest French foreign minister Laurent Fabius. Photograph: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

“A united Syria implies a political transition. That does not mean that Bashar al-Assad must leave even before the transition, but there must be assurances for the future,” he told regional newspaper Le Progrès.

The comments mark a change in France’s position on the Syrian president, as it has previously demanded the removal of Assad, describing him as a “butcher” of his own people.



There had been signs Paris might moderate its position as its priority shifted to tackling Islamic State, which carried out the Paris attacks last month in which 130 people were killed.