Three Buddhists shot dead, teachers’ homes attacked in Thai south. (Hat tip: Tom.)

PATTANI, Thailand : Three Buddhists including a mute labourer were shot and killed and teachers’ homes were attacked in southern Thailand, police said, as authorities vowed to boost security funding to counter rampaging violence.

Srang Saewong, 56, a mute highway worker in Yala province, was shot dead in Bannang Sata district as he drove to work.

“I don’t see a motive such as personal conflict. He was mute and his wife was also mute, so it’s just part of the campaign of unrest,” police Lieutenant Colonel Sakarin Bumpensamai of Bannang Sata told AFP.

Chicken trader Tonkui Saephoo, 72, was shot dead at a food market in Yaring district of Pattani province by unidentified gunmen, police said, adding that investigators were still at the scene.

In the same province, 52-year-old Thanat Nilvisut, a janitor at Pattani Technical College, was shot dead as he traveled to work.

More than 720 people have died in near-daily attacks or clashes with security forces since January 2004, when a bloody raid on a weapons depot triggered an uprising in the three majority-Muslim southern provinces bordering Malaysia.

In Narathiwat province, suspected Islamic insurgents spray gunfire at teachers’ homes, resulting in at least one teacher being shot in the arm. “Five houses were damaged and one teacher slightly wounded,” police Lieutenant Suwit Phumsathit said.