JUBA, South Sudan -- Five United Nations peacekeepers from India, and at least seven civilians, were killed Tuesday when armed rebels opened fire on a convoy in South Sudan.

South Sudan's military spokesman, Col. Philip Aguer, blamed the attack on fighters led by David Yau Yau, a Sudan-backed rebel leader South Sudan's military has battled for months.

The top U.N. envoy in South Sudan, Hilde Johnson, said in a statement that five peacekeepers and seven civilians working with the U.N. mission were killed. She said at least nine additional peacekeepers and civilians were injured and some remain unaccounted for.

Aguer said the attack took place on a convoy traveling between the South Sudanese towns of Pibor and Bor on Tuesday morning.

"Definitely this attack was carried out by David Yau Yau's militia," Aguer said. "They have been launching ambushes even on the SPLA for about six months now," he said, using the acronym for South Sudan's military.

South Sudan ended decades of civil war with Sudan in 2005 and peacefully formed its own country in 2011. But the south is still plagued by internal violence and shaky relations with Sudan. Leaders in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, deny that they are arming Yau Yau.

Syed Akbaruddin, spokesman of India's Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, India, said the convoy, which included 32 Indian soldiers, was attacked by rebels in Gurmukh in the volatile state of Jonglei. He said the casualties are being brought to the capital of South Sudan, Juba, and the injured will be sent to the U.N. mission hospital. The Indian embassy will work with the U.N. to bring the bodies back to India, he said.

India has about 2,200 Indian army personnel in South Sudan. They are in two battalions. One is based in Jonglei and the other is in Malakal, in the Upper Nile, on the border with Sudan.

The Indian embassy said it will inform families before releasing the names of the soldiers killed.

The top U.N. envoy in South Sudan, Johnson, sent condolences to the families of the dead and injured.

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Fayaz Aziz / Reuters

A driver who survived a shooting by unidentified gunmen in Swabi arrives at a Peshawar hospital on Tuesday after gunmen ambushed the car filled with aid workers that he was driving.

Updated at 10:20 a.m. ET: PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Motorcycle-riding gunmen shot and killed seven aid workers Tuesday in an ambush near a toll plaza in the Swabi district of Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Police said the gunmen rode their motorcycles in front of a van carrying the aid workers in order to stop it before opening fire on members of the nongovernmental organization Support With Working Solutions (SWSS). Six women and one man were shot dead at the scene, District Police Chief Abdur Rasheed Khan said, adding that the van's driver was seriously wounded.

The six women were serving as social workers and the man, a physician, was providing community health services, said Javed Akhtar, chief executive of Support With Working Solutions. They had just come from a meeting at a community center run by the organization.

Khan said the bodies of the victims were taken to the regional Shah Mansoor Hospital in Swabi.

Threats
He noted that NGO workers, particularly women, had been receiving threats from unknown people.

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Akhtar said his organization, which receives funding from the United Nations and the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund, has for now halted its work.

"We suspended our services due to threats to our staff members," Akhtar said. "We have 160 staff members, most of them females, working with the government in health education in underdeveloped areas of the country."

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Akhtar said the group has been working in Swabi for two years but had never previously felt serious dangers.

“We are working since 1992 in Pakistan and set up our services in Swabi two years ago, but we never faced any such threat, as all our staff was local," he said, adding, "This seemed to be part of a campaign against the polio drive."

Slideshow: Pakistan: A nation in turmoil

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.

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Last month, gunmen killed nine health workers taking part in a national polio vaccination drive in a series of attacks. Most of the victims were young women earning about $2 a day.

The Taliban said it did not carry out those attacks, although its leaders have repeatedly denounced the vaccination program as a plot to sterilize people or spy on Muslims.

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Aid workers have frequently been kidnapped or killed in Pakistan, a nation of 180 million that is struggling to contain a Taliban insurgency and plagued by endemic corruption and violent crime.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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British authorities have launched an international manhunt for a murder suspect who escaped from a prison van in a “well-orchestrated armed ambush,” including masked men, sledgehammers and a silver Mercedes.

West Mercia police said John Anslow, 31, escaped about 8:30 a.m. Monday while being transferred from Hewell prison in Redditch in central England to Stafford Crown Court.

Detective Inspector Jon Marsden said three men wearing balaclava masks used a silver Volkswagen Scirocco to block the van. They then smashed the windscreen and windows with sledgehammers and punched the driver. The men were able to grab Anslow and all took off in a silver Mercedes, with the partial registration KR11.

Two other prisoners in the van were left behind.

"This was a serious criminal incident involving a well-orchestrated armed ambush,” Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke told the Worcester News. "The first priority is to ensure that this man is quickly found and arrested."

Anslow, 31, was one of five men recently charged with fatally shooting a man in 2010.

Authorities told Britain’s Sky News Anslow uses the nickname Skits and is described as an extremely dangerous.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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