Five Muslims, one Buddhist killed in Thai south

YALA, Thailand, May 23 (Reuters) Five Muslims and a Buddhist were killed and six troops wounded in five separate attacks in Thailand's rebellious Muslim-majority far south, police said today.

At least 10 masked gunmen fired into a Muslim village late on Tuesday, killing three men and a woman, police said in Yala, one of the three southern provinces caught up in three years of separatist insurgency in which more than 2,100 people have died.

''They used all sorts of guns, shooting randomly'' and the four people were killed in different houses, a police investigator told Reuters by telephone.

The identity of the gunmen was unknown, but police presumed they were separatists, although Muslims accuse government supporters of killings.

Police and soldiers sent to investigate today clashed with militants, and one Muslim in his 50s was killed, a Reuters journalist who travelled with the troops said.

''I saw two soldiers carrying the body on a stretcher,'' he said.

Earlier today, a Buddhist government official was shot dead by a gunman riding pillion on a motorcycle while he was heading to work in the city of Yala on his own motorcycle, they said.

Shortly after, a 20 kg (44-lb) bomb in a fire extinguisher exploded on a road in nearby Yaha district as a truck carrying 10 soldiers drove past, wounding three slightly, police said.

In the nearby district of Than To, militants ambushed another patrol truck of soldiers with guns and a roadside bomb, wounding three, they said.

Militants fighting a separatist war against largely Buddhist Thailand often leave booby traps at the sites of their almost daily attacks.

Despite the violence and growing calls for more drastic action against the militants, Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont insists his government remains committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

REUTERS DS BST1722