25 Dead, Including Six Police, In Central African Clashes: UN

BANGUI, Central African Republic, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Oct, 2016 ) : Twenty-five people were killed, six of them gendarmes, in two days of violence around the town of Bambari in the troubled Central African Republic, the UN force MINUSCA said Saturday.

Six police and four civilians were killed in an ambush by armed men Friday morning, while on Thursday, 15 people died in fighting on the town's outskirts between the former Seleka militia and Christian vigilante groups known as "anti-balaka" (anti-machete), it said in a statement.

In a further incident, anti-balaka fighters on Friday attacked eight members of MINUSCA as they were heading to Bambari airport, the force said.

A seven-year-old child was injured. The UN force said there had been a "rise in tension in certain regions," citing "confrontation between armed elements of the ex-Seleka and anti-balaka" groups.

It called on the armed groups to end "the cycle of attack and reprisal." Bambari lies in central car, about 250 kilometres (150 miles) northeast of the capital Bangui. The bloodshed is the latest bout of violence to strike the CAR, a former French colony that is one of the world's poorest countries.