Police say Islamist militants have killed a Thai soldier in an ambush in the country's insurgency-plagued south.
Police Lt. Col. Sathid Chansorn says the soldier was killed when gunmen attacked the troops with automatic weapons during a routine patrol Wednesday in the southern province of Yala.
Sathid says Islamic separatists may have carried out the assault in retaliation for the killing of one of their local leaders and three other militants by security forces in a raid on a jungle hideout Friday.
More than 4,300 people have been killed in predominantly Buddhist Thailand’s three Muslim-dominated southern provinces since a separatist insurgency erupted in 2004.
