The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, Bangkok

Suspected Muslim insurgents shot and killed four people before beheading one victim in Thailand's insurgency-wracked south Tuesday, days before the country's first election since last year's coup, police said.

A village chief in Yala province's Bannang Sata district, was guarded by a group of village defense volunteers on his way home when at least 10 assailants opened fire on them, killing him and three volunteers, said police Lt. Sompien Eksomya.

"The village chief was beheaded and his severed head was found near the crime scene and the rest of the bodies," Sompien said.

More than 2,600 people have been killed in the Muslim-majority southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, and some parts of neighboring Songkhla, since a long-simmering Islamic separatist insurgency flared up in January 2004.