Bomb, shooting kill 6 in Thailand's Muslim south

BANGKOK, June 27 (Reuters) Suspected militants today blew up a truck and shot dead five security volunteers while a police informant was killed in a drive-by shooting in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south, police said.

The militants ambushed a group of security guards on the way to pick up teachers and take them to school, blew up their truck, and then shot them.

The militants seized the guards' weapons and fled in the southern province of Yala, officials said.

''That is the only route we can use every day to escort teachers going to school,'' local district chief Aya Ditapinan said in a region where militants see schools and their teachers as symbols of the predominantly Buddhist government.

The three southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat have been hit by almost daily bomb and gun attacks in a renewed separatist insurgency in which more than 1,300 people have been killed since January 2004.

Early this month, more than 60 small bombs exploded in two days, killing at least two people in the region, where more than 80 percent of the population is Muslim and speaks a Malay dialect.

In Narathiwat, a 35-year-old Muslim police informant was shot dead by a man riding pillion on a motorcycle, police said.

Police said they knew the killers and were hunting them.

Militants also launched two bomb attacks on convoys of police and troops guarding teachers in Narathiwat, but nobody was hurt, police said.

Reuters SY GC1044