A teacher was shot dead while looking after schoolchildren having lunch at a school in Narathiwat's Bacho district on Wednesday - the 158th teacher slain in the deep South since 2004.
Pol Lt Paradorn Kotetas, a duty officer at Bacho police station, said the murder took place at Ban Tanyong School at about 12.20 pm.
Teacher Chonlathee Charoenchol, aged 51, was shot dead at a school in Narathiwat on Wednesday. (Photo by Waedao Harai)
The victim, Chonlathee Charoenchol, 51, was found lying on the floor in a pool of blood near the entrance of the school cafeteria. He was shot twice in the head with 9mm bullets.
Witnesses told police that Chonlathee and other teachers were overseeing 292 students having lunch prior to the shooting.
A group of four gunmen arrived outside the lunchroom on two motorcycles. One of the gunmen pretended to be a parent of a pupil and approached Chonlathee. The gunman pulled out a gun and started firing at him. The teacher died on the spot.
The killers then stole the teacher's Nissan car and fled.
The school was ordered closed after the shooting as parents rushed to pick up their children, some of whom cried because they saw their teacher killed in front of them.
In Narathiwat's Rueso district on Wednesday morning, a soldier was seriously wounded in a gun attack.
The attack occurred at about 9.10am while eight soldiers of a security team of Narathiwat Task Force 30, assigned to escort teachers to schools, were boarding a pick-up truck after a break at a tea shop at Ban Pupo in tambon Rueso Ok.
A gunman hiding in a rubber plantation opposite the tea shop fired one shot with an M16 rifle at the soldiers. The bullet hit Pvt Suthipong Poonsawat, 22, who was the last man stepping on the truck, in the left hip.
In another attack, two men riding on a motorcycle attacked a pickup truck transporting seven students to Rueso kindergarten in Rueso district about 7.30am, Pol Col Anothai Jindamanee, superintendent of Rueso police station, said.
According to Deep South Watch, which monitors the southern violence, more than 5,000 people have been killed and over 9,000 injured in more than 11,000 incidents, or about 3.5 a day, in the three southernmost provinces and the four districts of Songkhla since the violence erupted afresh in January 2004.