BANGKOK, 5 November 2004 — Ten people including nine Buddhists have been killed in the past 24 hours in Thailand’s mainly Muslim south in a spate of violence following the death of 87 detained Muslims last week, police said yesterday.

A policeman, two state railway workers, a salesman and a former official were shot dead yesterday, while a Buddhist monk from Songkhla province was in critical condition after being shot by a man on a motorbike.

Police said the attacks followed the death of five other people Wednesday. More than half the killings occurred in Narathiwat province where 78 Muslims suffocated or were crushed to death after they were piled into military trucks last week following a demonstration at Tak Bai township.

Six others were shot dead by security forces at that demonstration and three more drowned. A 24-year-old motorbike salesman from Pattani was killed in neighboring Yala province around midday by two gunmen on a motorbike after two railway workers were shot dead in Narathiwat province.

A 61-year-old former district official was gunned down at his Pattani province fruit plantation early yesterday while a policeman was killed in a gun attack in a neighboring province.

On Wednesday, gunmen broke into a police sergeant’s house in Songkhla province and shot him dead. A 75-year-old mother and her 39-year-old son were killed in a separate shooting at their grocery shop in Narathiwat.

In the same province Wednesday a 40-year-old man was killed during an attack that left his 15-year-old son injured, while police found the unidentified body of a man in his late 30s who had been shot dead.

“The motive is believed to be linked to the ongoing violence in the south and police are investigating,” said Police Col. Maitree Saengarun. Police said nine of the dead were Buddhists while the former district official was a Muslim.

The killings follow the beheading of a Buddhist village leader in the mainly Muslim south Tuesday. That killing was claimed as a revenge murder for the Muslims who died at Tak Bai. The Fourth Army commander in charge of the south, Lt. Gen. Pisarn Wattanawongkeeree, was transferred to another post this week for failing to solve the unrest in the south of the mainly Buddhist kingdom.

A long-running separatist insurgency flared anew in the south in January. The latest killings, including a reported death of a man who had his throat slashed in Yala on Tuesday, bring this year’s death toll to more than 480.

Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai, meanwhile, played down a United Nations e-mailed warning to its staff to be extravigilant. “We can still confirm that we can provide high security to officials, diplomats and international staff,” he told reporters.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej made a rare intervention last weekend, calling for more restraint from troops in handling the unrest. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, facing his biggest crisis yet, ordered an independent inquiry into last week’s tragedy amid growing international condemnation. It is due to reveal its findings by Dec. 2.

Around 450 people have died in a 10-month wave of violence that erupted in January when militants stormed an army camp in Thailand’s remote south bordering Malaysia, killing four soldiers and making off with several hundred assault rifles.

With no signs the mainly Buddhist government in Bangkok is any closer to coming up with policies or answers to resolve the unrest, the daily cycle of shootings and explosions appears to be accelerating.

Last week’s tragedy, which Muslims have branded a “massacre”, has unleashed outrage in the relatively impoverished area, as well as grisly reprisals. A Buddhist village leader was beheaded this week in a grim echo of the decapitation of hostages in Iraq.

Thaksin appears at a loss to control the unrest, which is looking increasingly like a Muslim separatist insurgency in a region with a century and more of history of often violent opposition to rule from Bangkok.

Many schools in the south have delayed the start of the new term by at least a week because teachers in outlying areas are too scared to return to work. Schools, as well as other symbols of the state, have been frequent targets.