Live Blog: War against Islamic State

The Islamic State have stopped oil extraction from fields in Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria after US-led strikes targeted refineries, activists told AFP on Friday.

"Oil extraction has been halted because of the security situation," said Leith al-Deiri, an activist in Deir Ezzor who spoke to AFP via the Internet.

The US-led coalition striking positions of IS in Syria since Tuesday has not targeted any oil fields, but it has hit several makeshift refineries used by the extremists.

The only field in Deir Ezzor now operating is the Coneco gas field, which is used to produce electricity for six provinces, said Deiri, who used a pseudonym for fear of persecution by IS.

Another activist from Deir Ezzor, Rayan al-Furati, confirmed the halt.

Extraction, he said, "has been stopped temporarily".

Denmark will send seven F-16 fighter jets to help combat IS militants in Iraq, Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt said on Friday.

"I am very pleased that there now is a broad coalition, including countries in the region who want to... contribute," she said at a press conference, adding that the Danish fighter jets would not join US planes in bombing targets in Syria.

Turkey said Friday it was prepared to take any measure that ensures its own security in the fight against Islamic State militants, keeping Ankara's options open amid growing pressure from its Western allies for concrete action.

Ankara has for months frustrated the West with its distinctly low-key role in the campaign against IS jihadists but there have been signs over the last days it is shifting its approach.

"If any military operation or a solution carries the perspective of bringing peace and stability to the region, we will support it," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a meeting of his ruling party in Ankara.

"We will take whatever measures our national security requires," he said, but without giving details about what such measures could entail.

Alistair Burt MP, a Conservative MP and former Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said it was crucial to build alliance in the region to combat the rise of IS.

He praised the Islamic world's rejection of IS, and said they were "deeply upset" at the use of the Islamic title and said "they’re not Islamic and they’re not a state.”

But he also emphasised that “not all Islamist groups are enemy groups” and said it was important to recognise that "groups labelling themselves in a particularly way...are not always what they seem.”

He praised the British Muslim community saying that their reaction to IS had been "very dramatic and very strong."

He also emphasised that Assad was not a friend in Syria and that he had been in league with IS because his "greatest fear is his people, not those extremists."

He called for "an end to the intolerance in the region" and "sect against sect" warning that "intolerance runs through the region like a stick of rock."

George Galloway MP, a politician for the left-wing Respect Party and a former Labour MP who was ejected from the party for his support of the 2003 Iraq insurgency, criticised the House of Commons for discussing "imaginary" armies.

"What a tangled web we have woven is abundantly clear to everyone watching this debate," he said.

"The mission creep hasn’t even waited until the end of the debate...there’s a consensus here that there will be boots on the ground."

He pointed out that “there was no Islamist fundamentalism in Iraq” before the 2003 invasion and levelled the blame at the UK for the current situation.

He also emphasised that there was no real moderate opposition in Syria and that "the Free Syrian Army is a fiction.”

He said "the Iraqi army is the most expensively trained and modernly equipped in history" which "ran away leaving its equipment behind it.”

The Islamic State is a “death cult” who can only survive because “they have a population which is acting as the water in which they are swimming” and said "western policies and western occupation” were the main cause of the unrest.

“We’ve been bombing Iraqis for a hundred years.”

He said that the public had seen the folly of war and “the fools in here who draw a big salary”, meaning the MPs, cannot see it.

When heckled about what his solution would be he said “we have to strengthen the Kurdish fighters.”

Airstrikes could begin within hours if the UK parliament votes to take part in military action, according to the Guardian's Ewen MacAskill.

Andy Borowitz, writing in the New Yorkers, has written a satirical article claiming broad support for the bombings in Syria from people who "have yet to read a news article about Syria."

"In a positive development for the U.S.-led campaign of air strikes in Syria, a new poll indicates strong, broad-based support for the mission among people who have yet to read a news article about Syria."

"According to the poll, released on Tuesday, the bombing campaign got a thumbs-up from people who had no information about Syria’s civil war, including its duration, the parties involved, and what a Sunni is."

British police on Friday said they had arrested two more suspects in an investigation into "Islamist-related terrorism", a day after nine were detained.

The two men "were arrested in the early hours of this morning in a vehicle on the M6 motorway," which runs between central and northern England, police said in a statement.

One of them, aged 33, was arrested for "encouraging terrorism" and "being a member of a proscribed organisation", while the other, 42, was held for "assisting an offender".

"These arrests and searches are part of an ongoing investigation into Islamist-related terrorism and are not in response to any immediate public safety risk," police said.

Peter Hain MP, a former anti-apartheid campaigner and Labour politician who supported the 2003 invasion has warned that allowing IS "to retreat across an invisible border” is not a solution and said there needed to be a proper peace process in Syria.

With regards to his support of the 2003 invasion, he said he "backed Tony Blair over Iraq because I honestly believed Saddam had WMD. He didn’t, I was wrong."

He said the mistakes of 2003 had made him "deeply allergic" to action in the region and also said that the airstrikes on Libya in 2011 were “hardly a good advertisement for us with chaos in the country.”

He said that had the UK parliament voted to arm Syrian rebels last year it could have had negative consequences.

“Had the prime minister got his way last August where might those British arms have ended up? Probably with ISIL," he said.

He said it was also crucial to address the "bitter and violently corrosive shia-sunni faultline in the region."

Qatar's Emir Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has denied his country funds "terrorists" in Syria.

"If you talk about certain movements, especially in Syria and Iraq, we all consider them terrorist movement," he told CNN.

"But there are differences. There are differences that some countries and some people (believe) that any group which comes from Islamic background are terrorists. And we don't accept that."

He emphasised that the "main cause of all this is the regime in Syria, and this regime should be punished."

"If we think that we're going to get rid of the terrorist movements and leave those regimes doing what - this regime especially, doing what he is doing - then terrorist movements will come back again," he warned.

Leader of the opposition, and leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, has responded to the UK Prime Minister David Cameron, saying he supports the motion to join airstrikes in Iraq.

“I understand the qualms and for some deep unease about this undertaking,” he said.

He stated that “ISIL is not simply another terrorist organisation” and emphasised that their ideology “has nothing to do with the peaceful religion practiced by billions of people across the world and by millions of our fellow citizens who are appalled by their atrocities.”

In response to criticism over Labour’s original 2003 invasion of Iraq, he said that they “need to learn the lessons of the past.”

“I think there is a heightened responsibility because we did intervene in Iraq…we must believe there is a reasonable prospect of success.”

He stated that the Islamic State were not “an organisation that could or should be negotiated with.”

He stated that “nobody should be in any doubt that this is a difficult mission and should take time,” but said that “failure to act would mean more Mosuls” referring to the capture of Iraq’s second city in June.

He said it was crucial that any action “must not be seen as some new form of imperialism.”

Quoting the resignation letter of the late former foreign secretary Robin Cook – who resigned from the former Labour cabinet over the 2003 invasion – he said he agreed that “Our interests are best protected not by unilateral action, but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules.”

Spain and Morocco on Friday arrested nine suspected members of a group in north Africa linked to the Islamic State, the Spanish government said.

Spanish police and Moroccan security forces "today detained nine members of a terrorist cell... linked to the terrorist organisation Islamic State", Spain's interior ministry said.

Authorities in various countries have voiced fears about foreign fighters flocking to join IS.

The nine suspects were seized in Melilla, a Spanish territory on the northern tip of Morocco, and the nearby Moroccan city of Nador, the ministry said in a brief statement.

It said investigations were continuing and the ministry would give further details later.