Gunmen have killed at least 30 people in fresh attacks this week in the strife-torn Central African Republic, U.N. peacekeepers said on Thursday.

Several dozen people were also wounded in the attacks on the central village of Yamale on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the gunmen pillaging and burning down houses, U.N. force MINUSCA said.

Six militiamen were killed in an exchange of fire with international troops in the Central African Republic after they refused to lay down their arms, the U.N. force MINUSCA said on Thursday.

The deaths came after several days of violence pitting Christians against Muslims that has now left at least 15 people dead, including a Pakistani soldier serving with MINUSCA.

The Central African Republic's presidency on Wednesday said "negative forces" were trying to destabilize the interim government after fresh violence claimed four lives overnight.

"Heavy and light weapons were handed out to people, especially to youths, to sow terror in the land and call for the resignation of the transitional President (Catherine Samba Panza)," the president's office said in a statement.

CA Polish missionary was abducted on Sunday by a group of armed rebels in the Central African Republic, the Polish branch of the Vatican's Pontifical Mission Societies said Tuesday.

Father Mateusz Dziedzic, a Roman Catholic priest from Tarnow, southeastern Poland, was kidnapped at night by armed men who said they wanted to trade him for one of their leaders detained in neighboring Cameroon, the Polish source said.

A top U.N. official on Tuesday condemned the use of children in sectarian violence that engulfed the Central African Republic's capital last week, driving 6,500 people from their homes.

Claire Bourgeois, the U.N. humanitarian chief in the strife-torn country, urged militia leaders in Bangui to stop using and targeting children after at least three were killed in the latest clashes that also left a U.N. peacekeeper dead.

Six U.N. peacekeepers were injured during an attack by unknown assailants who opened fire on a patrol northeast of the capital Bangui, amid a flareup of violence after months of relative calm.

The new U.N. peacekeeping MINUSCA force, in a statement late Saturday, condemned Friday's attack, which came a day after another U.N. peacekeeper was killed near Bangui.

A U.N. peacekeeper from Pakistan was killed on Thursday in the Central African Republic during a flareup of violence engulfing the capital of Bangui after months of relative calm.

Another soldier was severely wounded during the ambush on a joint Pakistani-Bangladeshi convoy and seven others suffered slight injuries, U.N. officials said.

The Red Cross said Thursday fresh violence in the Central African Republic was preventing its work to help civilians, especially with its aid workers threatened by gunmen.

"Without security, we cannot do our work and save lives," said Jean-Francois Sangsue, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross's operations in the capital Bangui.

French peacekeepers killed up to seven people as they tried to control clashes between armed groups in the Central African town of Bambari that have left at least 25 dead, officials said on Thursday.

Bambari has become a stronghold for the mostly Muslim Seleka rebels that seized control of the country last year and were forced out of power in January. 

Central African Republic President Catherine Samba-Panza called Saturday for lifting a U.N. arms embargo on her country to allow the military forces to be equipped and shore up U.N. peacekeepers.

In her first address to the U.N. General Assembly, Samba-Panza also appealed for international support to disarm militias fueling violence in CAR, one of Africa's poorest countries which plunged into conflict after a March 2013 coup.