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At least 10 people have been killed and 19 injured after armed men opened fire on a mosque in southern Thailand.
Men armed with assault rifles entered the mosque in the Cho-ai-rong district of Narathiwat province during evening prayers on Monday and opened fire, the army and police said.
"They opened fire indiscriminately at about 50 worshippers inside the mosque," a police official said on condition of anonymity. The dead included the local imam, he said.
The attack in the Muslim-majority south comes amid a recent spike in violence in a five-year uprising that has left at least 3,700 people dead.
Police have said at least five gunmen carried out the attack, one of the deadliest single incidents since the uprising began in 2004.
'Unknown assailants'
Muslims make up more than 90 per cent of the two million people in southern provinces of Yala, Pattani, Narathiwat and Songkhla.
Many complain of being treated as second-class citizens in mainly Buddhist Thailand.
The area was a semi-autonomous Islamic Malay sultanate until annexed by Thailand in 1902.
Several violent uprisings have been put down by the army over the century.
The latest uprising flared in January 2004 when fighters raided an army base, killing four soldiers.
In March 2009, the government said 4,000 soldiers would be deployed to southern Thailand, supplementing more than 60,000 already stationed there.
Chaidilok said the local hospital was short of blood following a series of attacks in recent days and that military trucks with loudspeakers were urging residents to donate.
"We are calling on all Thais, Buddhist and Muslim alike, to donate your blood for humanitarian reasons because the hospital is now suffering from an acute lack of various groups of blood," the announcements said.
Very rarely does any group claim responsibility for attacks in the area, and the identity and precise goals of the fighters have never been publicly declared.
Earlier on Monday in the same province, nine soldiers were wounded when the truck in which they were travelling was ambushed, the state-run Thai News Agency reported.
The agency said a remote-controlled roadside bomb destroyed the vehicle, and attackers then opened fire on the solders before fleeing.
The attacks on Monday come as Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Thai prime minister held talks with Najib Razak, his Malaysian counterpart, on efforts to halt the uprising in southern Thailand.
Government efforts
The two discussed measures to bring economic progress to the south, including Malaysia's role of providing scholarships for Thai Muslim students and promoting the development of the education system in Thai provinces bordering northern Malaysia.
"In terms of creating opportunities particularly for young people in the area, I think that Malaysia has very important contributions," Abhisit told reporters after the meeting with Najib in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
In April the Thai government announced it was extending emergency rule for another three months in the region, despite a promise by Abhisit in January to cancel the measure.
PHOTO CAPTION
Handout photo from the Thai police shows police officers examining the bodies of men who were killed when suspected militants attacked worshippers at a mosque in the Cho-i-Rong distrist of Thailand's restive southern province of Narathiwat.
Agencies
Prayer Times
Prayer times for Doha, Qatar 
