Five killed in latest southern Thailand violence
27 December 2009


Thai soldiers receiving a briefing before an operation in Yala province.
(file pic)

YALA : Three Muslim villagers and two militants have died in the latest violence in Thailand's insurgency-plagued southern provinces, police said on Sunday.

Suspected militants shot and killed a 39-year-old Muslim as he was standing in front of his house in Pattani province late Saturday, they said.

After midnight, a group of insurgents also shot and killed two Muslim men, aged 25 and 20, while they were riding home by motorcycle in Yala province. A third man was wounded in the attack.

Early Sunday, army and police forces raided a house containing suspected rebels in Yala, and a 32-year-old militant was killed in an exchange of fire that lasted more than ten minutes, the police said.

In a second raid on a house in Yala, combined forces killed another fighter.

More than 4,000 people - both Buddhists and Muslims - have been killed and thousands more wounded since a separatist Islamic insurgency erupted in January 2004 in Thailand's southernmost provinces bordering Malaysia.

Tensions have simmered in the mainly Muslim region since it was annexed in 1902 by Buddhist-majority Thailand. - AFP/ms

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