YALA (Thailand), June 5: Three Muslim men have been killed in separate attacks on football fields in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south, where a separatist insurgency is raging, police said on Thursday.

A 30-year-old man was shot dead in Yala province on Wednesday evening as he played football with a group of friends, police in the region said.

The same evening in neighbouring Narathiwat province, three militants opened fire during half-time at a local game, killing a 40-year-old local government employee who was refereeing the match, and a 30-year-old player.

More than 3,300 people have been killed since separatist unrest broke out in January 2004 in the south, which was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until mainly Buddhist Thailand annexed it in 1902, provoking decades of tension.—AFP