Grenade Attack, Shooting Kills 3 In Thai South

The attacks came as Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thuagsuban flew to the Muslim-majority region bordering Malaysia on Saturday.

Three Buddhist villagers were killed and a dozen wounded in a grenade attack on a bus and a drive-by shooting in Thailand's Muslim deep south, police said on Saturday.

The attacks came as Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thuagsuban flew to the Muslim-majority region bordering Malaysia on Saturday, nearly a week after unknown gunmen killed 10 Muslims praying at a mosque.

The government has condemned a recent surge in violence in the region, where nearly 3,500 people have died in five years of unrest despite the presence of 30,000 troops in the three southernmost provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani.

In Yala, suspected militants tossed a grenade into a mini-bus packed with Buddhist vendors on Saturday, killing one and wounding 12 others, police said.

In separate incident, two Buddhist villagers were shot dead as they walked down a street in Yala's Bannang Sata district. "The two died at the scene," a police official said.

The region has been hit by its deadliest violence this year, with 27 people killed and more than 50 wounded in the last eight days. Monday's attack on the mosque in Narathiwat by gunmen armed with automatic rifles has raised tensions between Muslims and the region's minority Buddhists.

Villagers living near the mosque blamed the attack on security forces, saying no Muslim was capable of such an act.

The army rejected the claims and pointed the finger at separatist insurgents.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference, the world's biggest Islamic body, has called for a thorough probe of what it called the latest aggressive act on southern Muslims by "armed and organised elements".

Thailand's Foreign Ministry rebuked the OIC for "drawing premature conclusions about the identities and nature of this attack".

Mystery surrounds who is behind the violence in the rubber-rich region once part of an independent Malay Muslim sultanate until annexed by Buddhist Thailand a century ago.

No credible group has stated its aims or claimed responsibility for the near daily gun, bomb and arson attacks.