Triple blast kills 2 in Thai Muslim south

A triple bombing by suspected insurgents killed two villagers and wounded nine others in Thailand's deep south on Friday, police said, the latest attacks in the restive Muslim-dominated region bordering Malaysia.

At least four of those wounded were police who had rushed to the scene of the initial explosion to help the victims.

The devices were buried at three different locations around a reservoir in Narathiwat province.

Narathiwat and neighbouring Yala and Pattani have seen a shift in the scale and sophistication of insurgent attacks in the past few months, with Muslim and Buddhist villagers, soldiers, police and school teachers among the victims of coordinated bombings and ambushes.

Ethnic Malay Muslims represent the majority of the population in these southernmost provinces of predominantly Buddhist Thailand. About 4,600 people have been killed and nearly 9,000 wounded in violence since 2004.

The government and military have sought to curtail the unrest with development projects and public relations campaigns to try to discourage support for the shadowy rebels but the measures have largely failed.

Thailand's opposition party Puea Thai, which leads the ruling Democrat Party in most opinion polls ahead of a July 3 general election, has pledged, if elected, to turn the region into a special administrative region, which it believes could help to reduce the violence.