UN Seeks to Halt Isis Oil Trade by Seizing Tankers

A UN report is recommending that all oil tankers leaving territory controlled by militants in Iraq and Syria should be seized in order to cut off a vital source of funding for the self-declared Islamic State, Agence France Presse reported.

The UN's Al Qaeda monitoring team is also hoping to impose a ban on flights taking off or landing in territory controlled by the group, which has seized towns and cities in Syria and neighbouring Iraq, according to AFP.

The report is set to be discussed when the UN's Security Council next meets on Wednesday to discuss a plan to halt funding to jihadist groups.

The council adopted a resolution in August to cut off financing, as well as the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria, and warned that countries trading oil with the jihadists could face sanctions.

Turkey is thought to be a major transit route for oil produced within territory controlled by the Islamic State. The group is thought to make between $850,000 and $1.65m per day from oil sales, the report said, as cited by AFP.

"Sanctions measures cannot prevent this trade entirely," it said, but disrupting the tanker trucks available to ISIL and its allied smuggling networks (is) a point of vulnerability," the report said, AFP reported.

The report also highlighted the increasing danger that historic artefacts were being plundered and proposed a ban on the trade of antiquities from the region controlled by Isis.