Two killed as violence flares in Thai south

YALA, Thailand (Reuters) - Suspected Muslim insurgents killed a Buddhist woman and seriously wounded her husband in a dawn ambush at their home in Thailand's southernmost province on Saturday, police said.

The 19-year-old woman was shot dead in Yala province while trying to escape and her 29-year-old husband hospitalized, police said. As authorities examined the site of the shooting, a bomb exploded, seriously wounding three officers, police said.

Separately, in the same insurgency-plagued province, police found the body of a 42-year-old Muslim villager, handcuffed and shot in the head in a rice farm, police said. He was believed to have been killed near midnight on Friday or early Saturday.

The troubled region bordering Malaysia, only a few hours by car from some of Thailand's best-known tourist beaches, has seen an upsurge in violence as ethnic Malay Muslims fight for autonomy from Thailand's Buddhist majority.

The violence -- from drive-by shootings to bombings and beheadings -- has killed more than 3,600 people in the past five years.

Local Muslims largely oppose the presence of tens of thousands of police, soldiers and state-armed Buddhist guards in the rubber-rich region, which was part of a Malay Muslim sultanate until annexed by Thailand a century ago.

(Reporting by Surapan Boonthanom; Writing by Viparat Jantraprap; Editing by Jason Szep and Dean Yates)