Four more innocent victims of the jihad in South Thailand: Four shot dead in Thailand’s south.

SUSPECTED rebels have shot dead four local government employees in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south, which is battling a violent separatist insurgency, police said today.

A 59-year-old elementary school teacher was shot dead as he waited for a bus in Yala province, local police said, while a 22-year-old construction worker was killed in an ambush in the same province.

A 52-year-old police officer and a 44-year-old security guard at a technical college were killed in separate drive-by shootings in Yala, police said.

More than 2500 people have been killed in the far south since the latest unrest erupted in January 2004.