Privy Council President General Prem Tinsulanonda yesterday urged all Thai Muslims to follow the teachings of Islam in order to swiftly end violence in the three southernmost provinces.

He made his comments at the fifth "Heart-to-Heart to the South" project at the Army Club, attended by 120 southern youths gathered from the three provinces and four districts of Songkhla.

Prem believed the project would help solve deep South conflict. Youths will apply their knowledge and create a better understanding with their communities, he said.

The best solution is for all Thai Muslims to follow the teachings of Islam. This will quickly solve unrest because Islam taught people to do good deeds and help each other, Prem said.

The project sees South youths living with Islamic families in Bangkok and surrounding provinces. It educates them and provides vision and experience, according to Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont.

Meanwhile, two policemen were shot dead by suspected insurgents at a weekend market in the Bacho district of Narathiwat, according to district policeman Lieutenant Surachai Khamthabnam.

Corporal Theerayuth Yangsang, 29, and 25-year-old Lance Corporal Asawin Chaiyasat, both Buddhists, were shot in the head at point-blank range by two gunmen. They had been walking from a police post to the market yesterday afternoon.

They were rushed to hospital but later pronounced dead. The attackers snatched the officers' guns before fleeing. Some 100 shoppers witnessed the killings.

The attack is the latest in three years of violence that has claimed more than 2,000 lives in Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala.

Meanwhile, Army spokesman Colonel Akara Thiprote said confessions had been obtained from several of 66 suspects arrested in the Bannang Sata and Yaha districts of Yala following the execution-style slaying of passengers of a Betong-to-Hat Yai passenger van and a spate of bomb attacks on February 18.

In other security news, Thailand temporarily sealed the Three Pagodas Pass border checkpoint in the Sangkhlaburi district of Kanchanaburi and strengthened personnel along the border with Burma following the March 21 kidnapping of two border officers by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.