Prime Minister David Cameron announced tougher measures Monday against Britons planning to fight in Iraq and Syria, and battle-hardened jihadists who could return to launch attacks on home soil.

Cameron said his government would draw up measures to ban suspects who are British nationals from returning to the UK, while police will get enhanced powers to temporarily strip departing suspects of passports at the border.

Members of Saudi Arabia's religious police roughed up a British resident of Riyadh after they caught him paying at a women-only cash desk, local media reported on Monday.

Saudi Arabia imposes a strict interpretation of Islamic laws, notably a segregation of the sexes.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Saturday he was feeling "emotional and nervous" about the September 18 Scottish independence referendum.

Polls have consistently shown the "No" campaign ahead of the pro-independence push, but with three weeks to go until the ballot there remain hundreds of thousands of undecided voters.

British authorities are "close" to identifying the hooded Islamic State jihadist who beheaded American journalist James Foley, the British ambassador to the United States said Sunday.

"I can't say more than this but I know from my colleagues at home that we are close," said Ambassador Peter Westmacott.

U.S. President Barack Obama called for a joint effort to eliminate the "cancer" of jihadist terror in Iraq and Syria on Wednesday, after Islamic State militants murdered an American journalist.

Obama said the entire world was appalled by the beheading of 40-year-old reporter James Foley, which the IS fighters videotaped and published on the Internet.

Britain is reviewing licenses to sell arms and military goods to Israel in the light of ongoing operations in Gaza, Prime Minister David Cameron's office said Monday.

Britain's government has approved licenses for the sale of military goods to Israel worth at least £42 million ($71 million, 53 million euros) since 2010, according to government figures obtained by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT).

A British navy ship evacuated British nationals from Libya on Sunday, the defense ministry said, as worsening security there is forcing thousands to flee.

The HMS Enterprise, which had been on a Mediterranean deployment,  evacuated 110 people, mostly British, from the capital Tripoli, ambassador to Libya Michael Aron wrote on Twitter.

The Philippines on Sunday appealed to thousands of its nationals to flee Libya, warning that the situation there could worsen after only a few hundred heeded calls to return home.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was preparing a ship to ferry Filipino workers from Libyan cities to Malta so they can be flown home after fighting closed down the airport in Tripoli.

The father of a British MH17 victim said fighting in the Ukrainian plane crash zone should end to facilitate the repatriation of victims, after he met Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday.

Barry Sweeney, whose son Liam was among the 298 people killed, spoke of his anger and frustration at not knowing what had happened to the 28-year-old's body.

Britain's Foreign Office said Friday it was helping protect victims of the MH17 plane disaster against potential fraud after one man claimed his relative's credit cards had been stolen from the crash site.

A Foreign Office spokesman told Agence France-Presse they were "working with family members to protect victims from the possibility of financial and identity fraud."