YALA (Thailand) - SUSPECTED Islamic insurgents have shot dead four people and wounded another four - including an eight-year-old girl - in Thailand's troubled south, police said on Monday.

Officers on Sunday morning found a 34-year-old Buddhist shot dead and his 40-year-old colleague seriously wounded in a jungle in Yala province, where they had been collecting plants to sell at a local market, police said.

That afternoon, two gunmen on a motorcycle shot a 46-year-old Buddhist policeman working in Pattani province, who died in hospital.

Later in the same province, a 23-year-old Muslim was killed in a drive-by shooting while he was eating in a restaurant. The gunmen wounded three other people, including an eight-year-old girl, police said.

On Monday morning a 53-year-old Muslim, the former assistant to a village chief, was shot riding his motorcycle home from a teashop in Narathiwat province. He died in hospital.

More than 3,900 people have been killed since a bloody separatist rebellion erupted in January 2004 in Thailand's Muslim-majority southern provinces bordering Malaysia. --AFP

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