Reuters:

Militants shot dead two Muslim rubber tappers in Thailand’s deep south on Tuesday, then detonated a bomb and wounded five policemen and three villagers who had rushed to the scene, police said.

The father and son were killed in a rubber plantation in Yala, one of four southernmost provinces where 3,100 people have died in a four-year-old separatist insurgency.

Police believed the victims, aged 47 and 28, were attacked because they worked as village defence volunteers.

“The insurgents hate any Muslim who works with the government,” a police investigator told Reuters at the scene.

After killing the two men, the militants detonated a 20-kg roadside bomb as a police truck brought more officers and relatives to the plantation, police said.

BP: That is a big bomb.