Thai police officers and charity workers carry the body of a 22-year Buddhist man who was shot at his work site then set fire to his body and the truck he had been driving in Pattani proviince, southern Thailand Sunday, May 20, 2007. Bombings and drive-by shootings occur almost daily in Thailand's three Muslim-majority provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat which have claimed more than 2,200 lives since the insurgency flared in January 2004.
(AP Photo/Sumeth Panpetch)
Thai shootings kill 2, bomb wounds 11
PATTANI, Thailand --Suspected Muslim insurgents shot and killed two Buddhist civilians and wounded a third in southern Thailand on Sunday, while a bomb wounded 11 people, including five policemen, police said.
Police said they believed the attacks were part of an effort by Islamic insurgents to scare Buddhists into fleeing Thailand's three southernmost provinces, the only ones with Muslim majorities.
In Yala province, a gunman on the back seat of a motorcycle shot a 51-year-old woman and her 17-year-old son as they were riding her motorcycle to a rubber plantation, police Lt. Col. Somporn Toharb said. The woman was killed and her son was seriously wounded.
A 22-year-old driver for a construction company was shot at work in Pattani province, said police Col. Thawan Narawong. The attackers set fire to the man's body and truck.
The bombing occurred at a grocery shop in Narathiwat province, said police Lt. Thosphol Saingam. Five police, two defense volunteers and four civilians were wounded.
Since the Islamic separatist insurgency flared up in early 2004, near-daily bombings, drive-by shootings and other attacks have killed more than 2,200 people.
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