Separatist militants shot and killed three Muslim men in Thailand's south as violence intensified in the troubled region, police said Friday. An unknown number of militants shot dead a 29-year-old man Thursday night as he returned home from evening prayers at a mosque in Yala province, before dumping his body on a village road, they said.
In the same province, separatists shot two Muslim males while they ate dinner - a 21-year-old who died at the scene and a 16-year-old who died later at a local hospital. The incidents come amid a spike in unrest in Thailand's three southernmost provinces bordering Malaysia, where more than 3,700 people have died in a five-year insurgency against the rule of the central government.
Thai security forces late Thursday sealed off a village in Yala and shot dead four separatist militants. Insurgents in the Muslim-majority region have targeted both security forces and civilians - Buddhist and Muslim alike. Thailand's government is struggling to curb the recent surge in violence, which included a bloody attack on a mosque in which gunmen shot dead 11 people during evening prayers last week.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Sunday raised the possibility of making the south a special administrative zone as a political solution to the unrest but he ruled out granting any form of autonomy. The southern region was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until Thailand annexed it in 1902, provoking decades of tension.