 "British MPs vote to launch air strikes on ISIS in Syria")
British lawmakers have overwhelmingly voted by 397 to 223 to authorise UK air strikes against the dreaded Islamic State militant group in Syria.
The result followed an over 10-hour debate in the House of Commons yesterday where British Prime Minister David Cameron said the UK will be a safer place if the country joins its allies in air strikes on Syria.
"The question before the House is how we keep the British people safe from the threat posed by ISIS. This is not about whether we want to fight terrorism, it's about how best we do that," he told MPs during a House of Commons debate.
"We should answer the call from our allies. The action we propose is legal, it is necessary and it is the right thing to do to keep our country safe,"he said.
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".
He refused to do so, saying only: "I respect people who come to a different view from the government. I am not pretending that the answers are simple, the situation in Syria is incredibly complex".
He stressed the terror threat from the ISIS, which he referred to as "Daesh", another term for the Islamist extremists.
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"The question is this: do we work with our allies to degrade and destroy this threat and do we go after these terrorists in their heartlands? Or do we sit back and wait for them to attack us?". Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn opposed bombing but had given MPs a free vote amid divisions within his own ranks.
Corbyn's aides believed as many as 90 Labour MPs could back the government and with both the Democratic Unionist Party and the Liberal Democrats backing action, Cameron was expected to win parliamentary approval for the UK to intervene militarily in the four-year conflict in Syria.
The BBC estimates that ultimately 67 Labour MPs, including several members of the shadow cabinet, voted with the government to back air strikes although Labour MP Emily Thornberry told the channel that her estimated figure was 57.