Buddhist tapper beheaded in Thai Muslim south

YAIA, Thailand, Mar 7 (Reuters) A Buddhist rubber tapper was beheaded and his body set ablaze in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south today, police said.

The head of the 58-year-old man found near a Muslim religious school 1 kilometre from his body and his motorcycle, which were torched on a small road in Yala, one of the three violence-plagued far south provinces, police said.

''His headless body was still on the motorcycle when we arrived the scene this morning,'' police Lieutenant Colonel Jirasit Lormae told Reuters by telephone.

Two hours later, militants detonated a roadside bomb as police and soldiers were leaving the scene, wounding two policemen, Jirasit said.

In nearby Pattani province, two men on a motorcycle attacked a Buddhist family riding on a motorcycle to work, killing the father and wounding the mother and their four-year-old daughter, police said.

They were the latest victims in three years of separatist violence which has claimed more than 2,000 lives in a region where most people are ethnic Malay and Muslim. Thailand is overwhelmingly Buddhist.

REUTERS SY VC1002