The cabinet is now considering actively taking part in bombing raids against IS targets in Syria, the Volkskrant said on Thursday evening.

Game changers for foreign minister Bert Koenders, who has until now opposed Dutch involvement in Syria, have been the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and the decision by France and Britain to expand their role in the region, the paper said.

‘We have to look at what the added value of the Netherlands could be,’ Koenders told the paper, adding that ‘IS is an enemy that must not only be contained, but destroyed’.

Sources close to the cabinet have also said this opens a door to expanding Dutch involvement in the region to bombing targets in Syria as well as Iraq. The issue is likely to be discussed in today’s cabinet meeting but a formal decision is unlikely to be taken before next week, the paper said.

Defence minister Jeanine Hennis supports a bigger military role for the Dutch armed forces in Syria.

On Thursday, Dutch armed forces chief Tom Middendorp said international pressure on the Netherlands is mounting.

The international coalition wants to ‘hit IS where it hurts’, Middendorp said. They want to ‘damage their military capacity, and that is mainly in Syria where the training camps and their commanders are’. It would be ‘militarily both logical and efficient to focus on where the need is greatest’, he said. ‘That is currently Syria.’