Seven soldiers were killed Friday in a bombing and shooting attack by Islamic insurgents in Thailand's Muslim-majority south, police said.
The soldiers were travelling to a school in Yala province to provide security for teachers and students when the bomb exploded near their vehicle, police said. After the blast, rebels began shooting them, they said.
"Seven soldiers were killed and one injured. They were the security team for local teachers," said local police commander Colonel Aniruth Im-arb.
The ambush was similar to the slaying of 12 soldiers on May 31, which was the single deadliest attack on security forces in three years of separatist violence in the southern provinces bordering Malaysia.
Friday's attack followed another night of deadly unrest around the region, with three local government leaders -- all Muslims -- killed in a shooting attack on their car in Pattani provincial town.
Five Muslim men were also injured when gunmen sprayed bullets on a village teashop in Yala province, police said.
And one suspected militant died in neighbouring Narathiwat province when he accidentally detonated a five-kilo (11-pound) bomb that he was planting on a roadside, police said.
The ambush Friday also highlighted an alarming series of attacks this week targetting schools that have killed five teachers.
Two of them were female Buddhist teachers gunned down inside an elementary school library in front of their horrified students.
Militants also staged coordinated arson attacks on 13 schools late Wednesday and another torching late Thursday.
More than 260 schools in the region have been closed this week because of fears that security forces cannot guarantee the safety of children or teachers.
Armed soldiers escort teachers to schools and patrol campuses during classes, but that has done little to stop the attacks.
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.
"Militants see teachers as important figures in the south because they can influence the minds of children. Militants are not happy with teachers," said Srawut Aree, a senior researcher at the Muslim Studies Centre at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
"Teachers are easy, 'soft targets' for militants," he added.
Human Rights Watch denounced the attacks on schools and urged the government to do more to ensure the security of children.
"Insurgents are attempting to close down all government schools," Brad Adams, Asia director at the US-based rights group, said in a statement.
"Their campaign of terror strikes a serious blow to public education in the southern border provinces, which already retain the lowest test scores in Thailand," he said.
More than 2,200 people have been killed and thousands more wounded in separatist violence that erupted in the south in January 2004.
Thailand's three southern-most provinces were once an autonomous sultanate, until the Muslim-majority region was annexed by mainly Buddhist Thailand a century ago.
The Thai military currently deploys some 30,000 troops in the provinces in a bid to stem the ongoing violence.
