Thai-Muslim children look at their classroom in Ban Kasot School, Yala, after it was burnt down on Sunday night.

The source said the government agreed to give Bt1 billion for now. Isoc was allocated a budget of Bt5.9 billion for the 2007 fiscal year, but the source said the money seemed to be running out and there were still two financial quarters left before the end of the fiscal year.

The money will be put under the category of "secret budget", which means officials can spend it without having to account for it to the government, the source said.

Isoc, headed by Sonthi, was assigned as a key agency to contain violence in the predominantly Muslim provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani.

The violence in the region since the start of 2004 has claimed more than 2,000 lives. All efforts to restore peace have failed.

In the latest attacks, militants yesterday shot dead a Buddhist couple in Yala, cut off the husband's head and placed it front of a school in the province.

Praphan Polrak, 38, and his wife Chadakan, 30, were shot at about 7am while riding a motorcycle to work in an orchard in Ban Wanghin. Militants shot them with M-16s before beheading Praphan and taking away his head.

Police found the head packed in a plastic bag and left in front of Bannang Sata Witthaya at about 1pm, scaring teachers and students who turned up for the start of the new school semester yesterday.

The act was seen as a threat to the teachers. Schools in the restive region have been regular targets of the violence.

A school in Ban Kasot in Bannang Sata district was set on fire on Sunday night, badly damaging one of its buildings, police said.

Of the 71 state schools in Yala, 25 have been targets of arson, according to Natthakan Chantrakul, director of Yala's First Educational Region.

Eighteen of the schools were in Bannang Sata district alone, and one, the Ban Banlang school, had been set on fire as many as eight times, he said.