Suspected Islamic insurgents killed five people and seriously wounded another three, including two young children, in a roadside gun attack in the Thai south, police said.
Five militants, dressed like police, stopped their pick-up truck early on Tuesday evening by a fruit stall in Pattani province and opened fire at sellers and customers.
Four men and one 35-year-old woman were shot and later died at a nearby hospital while three people -- a girl aged 10, a seven-year-old boy and a 24-year-old man -- were left in a critical condition, police said.
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Afterwards the attackers set fire to an empty car.
Both Buddhists and Muslims were targeted in the attack, the latest in more than six years of violence since a separatist insurgency erupted in the Muslim-majority southern provinces in January 2004.
More than 4,300 people of both religions have since been killed in the region, once an autonomous Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it a century ago, provoking decades of tension.
