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Damae Che-wae, 66, was shot dead at close range by gunmen who came up behind him on another motorbike.

In Songkhla's Sabai Yoi district, suspected insurgents shot dead two villagers, Malaseng Hadlo and Muhammad Meesee, as they were riding a motorcycle home.

Police heading to the crime scene were impeded by spikes placed on the road by the culprits.

The killings occurred in the so-called red zone area, where insurgents are active, so the responding security team could not travel by foot.

The southern unrest erupted in 2004 in the three southern border provinces and sometimes spills over into adjacent four districts of Songkhla province.

Meanwhile, head of the multi-agency Southern Border Provinces Administrative Centre (SBPAC), Pranai Suwanarat, urged the public to be patient with the reconciliation process between the state and the Malay-speaking south saying it could take up to 20 years before true reconciliation could be achieved.

Violence in the restive have claimed more than 2,300 lives since January 2004.

Speaking in on a weekly television show in Bangkok, Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont defended the government's policy of reconciliation, coupled with the military's aggressive tactics that include search and mop-up operations that have resulted in the detention of hundreds of suspected militants and sympathisers.

Suryaud said a number of people have admitted assisting the insurgents or taking direct part in insurgency and stated that officials were looking to expand on this information.

He also dismissed suggestions that the suspects, virtually all of whom were detained without charges, were being mistreated.

Locals said the shake-down, which involved combined forces of police and soldiers, in three violence-prone districts in Yala and Narathiwat was more for domestic consumption amid a growing frustration over the authority's inability to curb the violence.

The Nation

Narathiwat