Muslim militants shot dead three Buddhist men and wounded three women in attacks in Thailand's rebellious south on Monday, police said, the latest in the two-year separatist insurgency. Gunmen riding pillion on two motorcycles shot dead the three Buddhists 300 metres from an army outpost as they loaded a truck with pungent smelling durian fruit they had bought from farmers in a Muslim village in Yala province.
The killing came days after leaflets were strewn around towns in Yala, one of three violence-plagued southern provinces, telling Buddhist to leave the predominantly Muslim areas.
In nearby Narathiwat province, a gunman riding pillion on a motorcycle wounded two Buddhist women and a Muslim woman as they rode home from a market on a single motorcycle, police said. "Muslim villagers took the Muslim woman to hospital, but the Buddhist mother and daughter had to wait until police arrived because they were afraid of being seen as helping the government," Police Colonel Thanongsak Wangsupa told Reuters. |