The southern violence continued yesterday as three men were shot to death in separate attacks by suspected militants in Narathiwat.

Police were alerted at about 7am that the charred body of a man was found on the side of Laven-Dahong Raod with his dog in Si Sakhon district.

Police identified the victim as Wissanu sae Lim, 19, who went missing from his home in the district on Friday.

Wissanu, who had gone hunting with two handguns and his dog, was shot to death and hit in the head with an axe. Three bullet wounds were found in his head and body. He and his dog were set on fire.

Police transferred his remains to a nearby hospital for an autopsy out of fear that officers working at the scene might be ambushed. In the afternoon, suspected insurgents gunned down Manas Somjit, 39, who went fishing with his friends in Rue Soh district. Police found his body riddled with bullets, but his friends managed to escape the attack.

In the same district, police found the body of Masaoki Wohdatoh, 43, a security guard of a municipal office in the district, shot dead near his motorcycle.

Meanwhile Sathien Sukasem, a volunteer, died at a hospital yesterday morning from serious head wounds suffered during a bomb attack in Yala's Yaha district on Friday.

Another volunteer wounded in the blast, Pichet Chandaeng, was still in intensive care.

Yala deputy governor Kritsada Bunraj recounted a two-hour stand-off on Friday in Raman district when he and other officers went to a village to meet the families of two villagers, who had been accidentally shot by soldiers on Thursday as they were chasing a group of suspected insurgents.

As they were about to leave the village, they were surrounded by dozens of shouting residents, mostly women and children, who screamed at other villagers to prevent them from getting away.

"At first some villagers seemed to listen to our explanation that the injured will receive a total of Bt40,000 in compensation, but some others behind them told them not to believe us," he said. This suggested that the rebels were behind the stand-off and had instigated the incident.

"What surprised me most was that the leaders of the group were seven- to eight-year-old boys and girls. The young were most aggressive. They yelled and incited people not to permit us to leave," he said.

To avoid a repeat of the bloody ending to a stand-off in which two marines were beaten to death, they calmed the villagers down and asked to talk to the parents.

This strategy worked as the parents whisked away their children. Female paratroopers were then brought in.