British Prime Minister David Cameron visited the flood-hit historic city of York on Monday as cities, towns and villages across northern England battled to get back on their feet following devastating storms.

Cameron met soldiers and volunteers helping with the aftermath of the flooding as he faced increasing pressure to take more action to prevent further chaos in future.

Police in Britain said Wednesday they had arrested a 31-year-old man in London in connection with suspected "extremist Islamist terrorism".

"The man was detained by officers at a business address in south London" on Tuesday, London's Metropolitan Police said.

The U.N. Security Council's backing for a plan to end the civil war in Syria is a "great step forward" for resolving the crisis, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Saturday.

The plan could potentially bring about a ceasefire as early as January.

Saudi-led military operations in Yemen are nearing their end as the focus turns to political talks, Britain's foreign minister said in Riyadh on Wednesday.

"We detect the military phase of this campaign is coming to a close as the coalition forces have established a dominant military position in the country," Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters after talks with King Salman and other leading members of the royal family.

A group of 84 bishops have written to Prime Minister David Cameron urging him to allow more Syrian refugees to settle in Britain, a letter published Saturday showed.

The call comes days after 300 senior lawyers, former law lords and retired judges described Cameron's offer to take 20,000 Syrian refugees over five years as "too low, too slow and too narrow".

Former British prime minister Tony Blair was committed to joining the United States in the Iraq war a year before the 2003 invasion, documents obtained by a Sunday newspaper suggested.

The revelations focus on a memo allegedly written by former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell on March 28, 2002 to then president George Bush a week before the U.S. leader's meeting with Blair at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Britain must accept more Syrian refugees faster in response to a humanitarian crisis of people fleeing conflict, a group of over 300 lawyers demanded in a statement released Monday.

The group, which includes a former president of Britain's supreme court and other prominent figures, called for the suspension of a system whereby asylum seekers claim asylum in the first EU country to which they arrive.

Russia is backing "butcher" President Bashar al-Assad with airstrikes that are often not aimed at Islamic State (IS) fighters in Syria, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron said Saturday.

Cameron said Russian forces were "making the situation worse" as they pressed a bombing campaign in the IS stronghold for a fourth day. 

Britain's youngest person convicted of terrorism was sentenced Friday to a minimum of five years in jail for plotting an Islamic State-inspired "massacre" on an Anzac Day parade in Australia.

The boy, nicknamed "the terrorist" by his classmates, was only 14 when he masterminded the plot to behead police officers at a memorial event in Melbourne, from his bedroom in Lancashire, northern England.

Britain is to send dozens of troops to Somalia and possibly South Sudan to train soldiers and boost security in the region, Downing Street said Monday.

Around 70 troops will go to Somalia, where the al-Qaida-affiliated Shebab is fighting to overthrow the internationally-backed government in Mogadishu protected by 22,000 African Union troops from Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.