December 29, 2009
NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AFP) - Suspected militants have shot and killed two men in the latest unrest in southern Thailand, police said Tuesday.
A 48-year-old Muslim man was shot dead by a group of gunmen on a pick-up truck while he was on his way home from a mosque in Narathiwat province on Monday night.
Early Tuesday in the same province, a 29-year-old Buddhist man was shot as he travelled with his parents to work at a rubber plantation, police said.
He died later at hospital, but his parents were unharmed.
More than 4,000 people have been killed since a separatist Islamic insurgency erupted in Thailand's Muslim-majority southernmost provinces, bordering Malaysia, six years ago.
The former Malay Muslim sultanate has suffered from decades of tension since it was annexed by predominantly Buddhist Thailand in 1902.
