Suspected Islamist militants killed five people in Thailand's troubled south, including a teenager who had his throat slit and his body set on fire, police said Sunday. The 19-year-old Muslim was attacked on Saturday at the rubber plantation where he worked in Yala province, one of three provinces bordering Malaysia where a five-year separatist insurgency is raging.
On the same day in neighbouring Narathiwat province, a group of up to eight gunmen in a pick-up truck opened fire on a family. A 51-year-old man was killed and three of his relatives injured, police said. Separately, a Muslim man aged 56 was shot dead at a teashop in Narathiwat on Saturday night by attackers on motorcycles, while a 10-year-old boy and another man were wounded in the shooting, police added. Gunmen meanwhile shot and killed two assistants to village chiefs in Pattani province as the men were riding on motorbikes to see friends, also late Saturday, police said.
Nearly 3,900 people have been killed and thousands more injured since the insurgency erupted in the south in early 2004, led by shadowy militants who have killed Buddhists and Muslims alike.