Suspected insurgents killed eight Buddhists and wounded two people in Thailand's rebellious Muslim south today in an attack on a civilian minibus.
At least five militants sprayed the minibus with automatic rifle fire on highway in Yala, one of the three provinces hit by a three-year separatist insurgency, as it tried to escape the ambush in a rubber plantation, army spokesman Colonel Acra Tiproch said.
"They blocked the road with a tree trunk and sprayed the van with automatic rifles as the driver was making a U-turn to avoid the danger," Colonel Acra said.
The attack took place on the anniversary of the founding of the separatist Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), or National Revolutionary Front, which the government had feared would be marked by an increase in violence.
The four men, two women, a boy and a girl were each hit by several bullets. The minibus was headed for Hat Yai, the commercial capital of the south, from Betong on the Malaysian border.
Australia has issued two travel alerts for Thailand in the past few weeks, saying intelligence pointed to a high threat of extremist bombs attacks. Security forces were on full alert in Bangkok, where a wave of still unsolved bombs killed three people on New Year's Eve, but Thai army commanders said they had no reason to believe the capital would be a target.
They did, however, say they expected a spike in violence in the far south, an independent sultanate until annexed by overwhelmingly Buddhist Thailand a century ago.