'Biggest insurgent attack in years' in Thai south wounds 12 police

Military personnel inspect a site of an attack at Krong Pinang district, in the troubled southern province of Yala, Thailand, April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Surapan Boonthanom

YALA, Thailand (Reuters) - Insurgents fired hundreds of shots into a police booth in restive Muslim-majority southern Thailand on Monday, wounding 12 officers in what police called the biggest such attack in years.

A decades-old separatist insurgency in the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat has claimed more than 6,500 lives since it escalated in 2004, according to independent monitoring group Deep South Watch.