YALA (Thailand) Aug 27: Two Buddhist Thais and two Muslims, including defence volunteers of both faiths, have been shot dead by suspected militants in the restive south, police said on Saturday.

Sukit Yingsong, a 28-year-old defence volunteer, and his paralysed father Kan Yingsong, 60, were strafed with automatic weapons fire at their home in Yala province late on Friday, police said.

“It is clear that the perpetrators were militants because Sukit was threatened and told to abandon his house, which is surrounded by Muslim villagers,” said district police commander Colonel Parnpitak Thepchudeang.

Also on Friday night, gunmen broke into the home of Ma-ae Wantae, 37, a deputy village headman in Ra-ngae district of Narathiwat province and opened fire. Ma-ae was pronounced dead while on the way to hospital.

The fourth victim was Muslim defence volunteer Hadi Mataleela, 36, who was ambushed on Saturday afternoon as he drove his motorcycle in Raman district of Yala province.

Police in both cases said the style of the attacks made them suspect the culprits were Muslim militants.

More than 870 people have been killed in 20 months of almost daily attacks in the Muslim-majority southernmost provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat which border Malaysia.

Justice Minister Chidchai Vansathidya, who is visiting the region, on Saturday asked police to speed up investigations into the killings to determine which were linked to the insurgency and which were unrelated rimes.

“Of all the murder cases that have happened in the south I think no more than 30 per cent are related to the unrest,” he said.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Saturday he was confident that the upper house Senate will endorse controversial emergency measures over the three troubled provinces by early next week.

—AFP