BOLTON MP Yasmin Qureshi made a final bid to prevent MPs voting in favour of dropping bombs in Syria.

Ms Qureshi urged her Parliamentary colleagues not to back Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans for air strikes against Islamic State targets in the Middle Eastern nation.

The Bolton South East MP was one of 157 members who registered to speak during today's 10-hour debate in the House of Commons, which is expected to conclude later tonight.

Ms Qureshi had previously sent a letter to all of her fellow Labour MPs, in which she said that she had returned from a fact-finding mission to the Middle East region “unconvinced” that the Government’s plans for air strikes alone in Syria would have any effect.

Speaking in the commons, she reacted angrily to a comment from Mr Cameron to his Conservative colleagues, in which he reportedly referred to Labour MPs voting against the air strikes as “terrorist sympathisers.”

She said: “No one in this house who is voting against the motion is not bothered about the security of the UK and the people who live here.

“We all live here and so do our families, so the suggestion that somehow we are terrorist sympathisers is something I find extremely insulting.”

Ms Qureshi said she spoke with politicians and members of the armed forces and security services in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon during her trip to find out how they are battling Islamic State insurgenets at their borders.

She said: “Every single person agreed that the extension of air strikes (by the UK) into Syria alone is not going to achieve anything, what we need is a massive number of boots on the ground.”

She added: “I would happily support this motion if I genuinely believed that it was going to make a dent (on ISIS) and if I thought it would make the UK safer.”