Hello and welcome to News Hour. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service

studios in Central London. I'm Tim Franks and we're beginning with a major Israeli

operation in the West Bank.

It's continued for a second day with the Israeli military saying

that it killed five Palestinian fighters inside a mosque in the city of Tulkaram. The militant group Palestinian Islamic

jihad said that one of its top commanders was among those killed.

Well here in a little while from a journalist who met that commander only weeks ago. The UN

meanwhile is called for Israel's operation to be halted immediately. I've been

hearing more from our correspondent John Donison who spent the day in the

northern West Bank city of Janine.

Well, first of all, access is difficult.

We drove into Janine this morning and we were told that all the roads into Janine Bar 1 were blocked by the Israeli military.

We took a back route into the city and this is normally a big bustling, vibrant Palestinian city and the streets are absolutely deserted.

All the businesses are shuttered up and people are waiting really just to see when this

Israeli military operation is going to end. Now it's been pretty quiet today

but just in the last hour or so we've heard two loud explosions coming from the densely

populated urban refugee camp in Janine and the sound of quite prolonged and sustained gunfire as well within the last hour or so.

So it does seem that there is still an operation of some kind going on here.

There are Israeli military bulldozers still in the town and also just to the west of where we are in

Torram there has been a lot of Israeli military

activity there. Five Palestinian militants killed according to Israel's army and

they say that they were killed in a strike on a mosque there.

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