4 killed, 12 wounded in restive south Thailand

Four insurgents were killed in a shootout with government security forces in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south on Friday and 12 people were wounded in a truck bombing, police said, as separatist tensions intensify near the border with Malaysia.

Fighting erupted at dawn in a village in Yala province when security forces came under fire after surrounding the home of a suspected militant. Police said four rebels were killed in the gunfight.

Four hours later in Narathiwat province, 12 people, including a policemen, were wounded when a bomb exploded beneath a pickup truck close to a market.

The blast came nine minutes after a bomb hidden in a motorcycle went off outside a Muslim tea shop in the same district, although no injuries were reported.

The incidents follow a sharp rise in the scale and volume of attacks in the past three weeks, with Muslim villagers, soldiers, police and Buddhist monks among the victims of roadside blasts, a bombing during a soccer match and drive-by shooting at a packed tea shop.

Ethnic Malay Muslims represent the majority of the local population of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, the southernmost provinces of predominantly Buddhist Thailand. More than 4,500 people have been killed and nearly 9,000 wounded in violence since 2004.