Gunman kills three in conflict-hit southern Thailand

FILE PHOTO: Thai-Muslim students hold a candlelight vigil for victims of the Tak Bai shooting on its third anniversary, outside the United Nations building in Bangkok, October 25, 2007. Last year, a Thai court dismissed the long-delayed Tak Bai case, brought by victims' families against seven officials, when the statute of limitations expired. - Reuters

BANGKOK: A gunman has shot dead three people including a child in Thailand's insurgency-hit south, police said Saturday (May 3), as authorities pursued the suspect.

The attacker opened fire late Friday in a residential area of Tak Bai district in Narathiwat province, one of three Muslim-majority provinces in Thailand's far south gripped by a decades-long separatist insurgency.