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NARATHIWAT, THAILAND - SUSPECTED separatist rebels have shot dead seven people in insurgency-hit southern Thailand, police said on Tuesday.
A 52-year-old man and his 46-year-old wife were killed in an ambush in Pattani province early Tuesday as they travelled to their jobs at a rubber plantation, police said.
On Monday, two soldiers with a government-backed militia were killed while they were off-duty in nearby Narathiwat, one of three southern provinces beset by a bloody separatist movement.
Three Muslim men were killed the same day in two separate attacks in Pattani province, police in the region said.
The slew of killings came two days after Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej paid his first visit to the restive region since taking office in January.
He said on his Sunday television show that the violence had recently eased.
More than 3,000 people have been killed since separatist unrest broke out in January 2004 in the south, which was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until mainly Buddhist Thailand annexed it in 1902, provoking decades of tension. -- AFP
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