NARATHIWAT (Thailand) - SUSPECTED separatists shot dead two Muslim civilians in the latest attacks in Thailand's restive Muslim-majority south, police said on Friday.

A 64-year-old village chief in Pattani province was killed in a drive-by shooting on Friday morning, while in nearby Narathiwat a 36-year-old man was killed after dropping his three children off at school, police said.

More than 3,300 people have been killed since separatist unrest broke out in January 2004 in the south, which was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until mainly Buddhist Thailand annexed it in 1902, provoking decades of tension.