More fear and chaos gripped Thailand's restive South yesterday as about 30 armed men raided a Buddhist village in Yaring district and torched two houses and shot dead three villagers, while in two other nearby districts two young men were shot dead at close range, police said.

Pol Colonel Sunthon Disyabutr, superintendent of Yaring district, said 50 police officers and two fire trucks were sent to Che Orh village, a small Buddhist community, where gunmen shot dead the three villagers.

The body of Sa-ngeam Kaeowprasert, 70, one of the three victims, was found riddled with bullets and burnt beyond recognition in his house, which was destroyed by fire early yesterday morning.

His wife, Thanom, appeared to have escaped the burning house but did not survive gunshot wounds.

The body of villager Somphit Putrarat, 35, was riddled with machine gun bullets. Authorities found his wife and four-year-old child weeping next to his body in the yard.

Sunthon blamed insurgents for the attacks, which he said was aimed at making the area ungovernable for the authorities and instigating sectarian violence in the region.

The late-night attack on the village community appeared to have marked a shift in strategy, from point-blank assassination to attacking soft targets in Buddhist communities, Sunthon said.

In the other incidents, gunmen shot dead a young man, Marading Mache, 25, in Khok Po district, while in Panare district, Kermor Yakoh, 49, was shot dead at dawn when out herding his cattle.

Meanwhile, in Nong Chik district's Tu Yong village, an elementary public school was torched but damage was minimum as residents quickly put out the fire.

In nearby Narathiwat, Deputy Governor Wichit Chartpaisit, provincial police commissioner Lt-General Yongyuth Charoenwanit and the deputy commander of the Army's Taskforce 3, Colonel Somphol Pankul, paraded 31 individuals who they claimed to have been "misguided" by insurgents bent on carving out a separate homeland for ethnic Malays in the three southernmost provinces.

The Nation

Pattani