Update - Cameron Calls For UK Airstrikes On Daesh İn Syria

Britain cannot wait for a representative government to emerge in Syria and must launch airstrikes in order to eradicate Daesh, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron has said.



In a statement to the House of Commons on Thursday morning, Cameron said that he was launching what he called his "ISIL [Daesh] first strategy" to tackle the Syrian civil war.



He also said that British aircraft had permission to use Turkish airspace in his proposed strikes on Syria.



"The initial objective is to damage ISIL and reduce its capacity to do us harm and I believe that this can in time lead to its eradication.



"No-one predicted ISIL's rise and we should not expect that it's somehow impossible to bring them to an end. They are not what the people of Iraq and Syria want, they don't represent the true religion of Islam and they're losing ground in Iraq following losses in Sinjar and Baiji," he said.



In the debate that followed, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said that there was a military or diplomatic strategy coordinated by the United Nations and asked whether this could increase the risk of "dangerous incidents", such as Tuesday's shooting down of a Russian aircraft in Turkish airspace.



Cameron responded: "Obviously what happened in Turkey, as I said yesterday, we have to get to the bottom of that. But, obviously, we have permission to overfly Turkish airspace and Turkey is our ally in this conflict".



The British premier was responding to a Nov. 3 parliamentary committee report that said it was "not yet persuaded" that U.K. airstrikes in Syria could help defeat Daesh and end the conflict in Syria.



Britain has been striking Daesh targets in Iraq from the air since September 2014, although Cameron has long wanted to broaden the mission to include the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. Such a move would require parliamentary approval. - London, City of