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PATTANI, Thailand: Suspected Islamic militants shot dead three Thai workers and set their bodies on fire in the middle of road Thursday in Thailand's troubled south, police said.
The three men, who worked for a telephone company, were killed as they travelled by pick-up truck in Pattani province. Police were unable to give further details of the victims, but said a fourth man escaped the attack.
Around the same time, in a separate incident in Pattani, a 61-year-old vendor was shot dead.
A six-year separatist insurgency in Thailand's Muslim-majority southern provinces bordering Malaysia has left more than 4,000 people dead and thousands more wounded.
The shadowy militant groups in the region never publicly state their goals but have targeted both Buddhists and Muslims, sometimes using gruesome methods such as beheadings and crucifixions.
The region was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until it was annexed in 1902 by mainly Buddhist Thailand and tensions have bubbled there ever since, flaring up into the current insurgency in January 2004.
- AFP/sc
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