September 30, 2009
YALA, Thailand (AFP) - Suspected Islamic militants shot dead three more civilians in southern Thailand, bringing the toll from a sudden killing spree in the troubled region to eight, police said Wednesday.
Thailand's Muslim-majority southern provinces bordering Malaysia have been gripped for the last five years by a bitter separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 3,900 lives.
In the latest in a series of attacks targeting civilians, four gunmen in fake police uniforms went to an irrigation official's house in Pattani province on Tuesday and pretended to ask for escaped militants, police said.
They then sprayed bullets at four people inside the house, killing a male Muslim security guard and a Buddhist woman who also worked at the office, they said. Two other men were wounded.
Meanwhile a Muslim man was killed in a drive-by shooting, also in Pattani on Tuesday.
Insurgents killed five Muslim civilians in separate incidents on Monday, shooting four and stabbing one to death, police said.
The shadowy militants in the Thai south, who have never publicly stated their goals, target Muslims and Buddhists alike and both civilians and members of the security forces.
The region was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until it was annexed by predominantly Buddhist Thailand in 1902, sparking decades of tension that erupted into a full-scale insurgency in January 2004.
