PATTANI: Suspected Islamist militants killed two soldiers and four civilians in drive-by shootings in the latest violence to rock Thailand's insurgency-hit south, police said Thursday.

More than 4,000 people have been killed and thousands more wounded since a separatist rebellion erupted nearly six years ago in Thailand's troubled provinces bordering Malaysia.

Two members of the rangers security force and a Buddhist civilian were killed Thursday in a drive-by shooting in Narathiwat province by suspected insurgents who also took the troops' assault rifles, police said.

Gunmen on motorbikes shot dead a 42-year-old villager as he drove home in neighbouring Pattani province, also on Thursday, said police.

On Wednesday, motorbike-riding attackers killed a 49-year-old assistant to a village chief in Pattani at a local tea shop, police said.

An hour later a district chief aged 45 was shot dead by gunmen in a pick-up truck while he was driving home from a meeting in Pattani. The shooting also injured two villagers.

The current insurgency erupted in January 2004, when militants raided a southern army base, killing four soldiers, and has escalated with a string of attacks ranging from bombings and shootings to burnings and crucifixions.

Tensions had bubbled under the surface in the region with occasional flare-ups since predominantly Buddhist Thailand annexed the former Malay Muslim sultanate in 1902.

The shadowy militants never claim responsibility for their attacks but the violence has also remained confined to the south and is not thought to have links to foreign extremist groups.