China's eighth peacekeeping squad, an 11-strong team, left Beijing Sunday to take part in the United Nations mission in Sudan.

The team has been selected from police forces in Beijing and the provinces of Heilongjiang, Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Yunnan, Guangdong and Hainan, the Ministry of Public Security said Monday.

All members of the squad have a fundamental knowledge and skills of peacekeeping missions and have passed national selection exams, it said.

China first sent peacekeepers to join UN peacekeeping efforts in the war-torn region of southern Sudan in May 2006.

Since January 2000, China has sent 1,554 police on UN peacekeeping missions to East Timor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Liberia, Afghanistan, Haiti and Sudan.

(Xinhua News Agency September 21, 2009)