Lek Pongsiriprabha, a resident of Yala’s Muang district, lies dead after being shot by gunmen on a motorbike. Police suspect the killing is related to the ongoing insurgency in the restive region.

The Army yesterday defended a group of government-backed Village Defence Volunteers over the death of four Muslim students, accusing the latter of provoking a fatal shoot-out on Monday evening.

Colonel Akara Thiprot said the four dead students, and seven others who were injured, "attacked the volunteers with sticks and rocks and the volunteers were within their rights to fire at them out of self defence."

According to Akara, the victims were part of around 100 Muslims returning from a funeral for a local official in Yala's Tambon Kuern Banglang in Bannang Sata district, who had been killed a day before.

Akara said the drama at 5pm started around midday, when about 100 funeral goers passed a checkpoint manned by a handful of local Buddhist villagers.

The two sides began to exchange heated words and some of the Muslims students and villagers jumped out of the pickup truck

and charged at the checkpoint with rocks and sticks. They damaged some of the volunteers' belongings and wrecked the outpost.

Akara said the volunteers decided not put up a fight and retreated to a nearby Border Patrol Police outpost instead.

But in the late afternoon, on their way back from the funeral, anger was still high among the Muslims.

This time around the Buddhists volunteers stood their ground and fired at the unarmed Muslims, killing three on the spot. The fourth victim died yesterday morning at the hospital. Six others are still being treated for gunshot wounds.

"We have to blame the instigators on this one," Akara said.

Akara said just moments before the Muslims charged the outpost, somebody had fired a shot into the air. It was not known who fired the shot but it appeared to have stirred up the situation, making it even more tense.

Akara said there was no plan to take legal action against the volunteers, saying they had acted within the rules of engagement.

He said the authorities planned to get community and religious leaders of both sides to create an understanding of what happened.

He said Kuern Banglang area had been tense for months amid rising violence that fuelled mistrust and pitted Buddhists against Muslims.

The incident inflamed passions and sparked at least three anti-government protests yesterday.

It also put the spotlight on what analysts said was a poor state of affairs for village defence volunteers, which include Muslims, who are poorly trained but serve as a front line of defence in the region, where more than 2,000 people have been killed since January 2004.

Monday's shootings came against a backdrop of other incidents where local Muslims have clashed with state agencies.

Yesterday, Lek Pongsiriprabha, a resident of Yala's Muang district, was shot dead by gunmen riding a motorbike. And in Rangae district, Narathiwat, female village defence volunteer Fatimoh Hajicheloh, 38, was shot dead while travelling to the district office where she worked on a security detail.

In Bangkok, the government extended the emergency law for another three months in the deep South.