A Man killed, 13 schools burned in Thailand

A man was shot dead while insurgents set fire to 13 schools in Thailand’s insurgency-torn south, police said on Thursday.

The 44-year-old man was gunned down late Wednesday by militants in a drive-by shooting in Yala, one of three Muslim-majority provinces bordering Malaysia, police said.

In nearby Narathiwat, a soldier guarding a vocational college was injured early Thursday when a bomb exploded in front of the school.

Insurgents also torched 13 schools in nearly simultaneous arson attacks in Yala and Pattani provinces late Wednesday, police added.

The latest arson attacks brought the number of schools torched by rebels to 200, while 77 teachers have been killed in the three-year insurgency, according to education officials in the region.

Teachers and schools are often targeted by insurgents, who see them as trying to impose Buddhist Thai values on the Muslim and ethnic Malay region.

More than 2,200 people have been killed and thousands more wounded in separatist violence that erupted in the south in January 2004.