By ANTARA News/AFP
Narathiwat, Thailand : Suspected separatist rebels have shot dead three Muslim men in separate attacks across the insurgency-hit south of Thailand, police said Sunday.
Two unidentified men on a motorcycle shot dead a 28-year-old villager in front of his house in Narathiwat province late on Saturday.
Hours later in nearby Yala province, the son of a local politician was killed by gunmen, while a third Muslim was shot dead elsewhere in the same province as he returned home from the local mosque, police reported.
More that 3,000 people have been killed since separatist violence erupted in the south in January 2004. The region was once an autonomous Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it a century ago, provoking decades of tension.