Four people, including two soldiers, were killed Sunday in a string of shootings by suspected militants in Thailand's restive Muslim-majority south, police said.
Militants approached two officers and shot them at point-blank range at a food market in Yala, one of three insurgency-torn southern provinces bordering Malaysia, police said. The militants fled the scene on two motorcycles.
Earlier in the day, a 47-year-old Buddhist government worker was shot dead while riding a motorcycle with his wife in neighbouring Narathiwat province. The wife was also injured.
Also in Narathiwat, a 24-year-old Muslim villager was gunned down by two militants on a motorcycle, police said.
Since taking office after the September coup, Premier Surayud Chulanont has offered a number of olive branches, including an offer to hold peace talks with militants, in a bid to bring peace to the troubled region.
But deadly attacks continue to rattle the south, where more than 1,600 people have been killed in the almost daily violence since January 2004.
The Muslim-majority area was an independent sultanate annexed by mainly Buddhist Thailand in 1902. Separatist violence has erupted periodically ever since.
The unrest has been variously blamed on ethnic Malay separatists, Islamic extremists and criminal gangs.
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