YALA (Thailand) - SUSPECTED separatist rebels shot dead seven people including two women in attacks across southern Thailand, police said on Tuesday, as violence spiralled in the Muslim-majority region.

Two men were shot dead on Tuesday in Pattani, one of three far southern provinces beset by a nearly five-year long insurgency.

'We still don't know their names or their ages yet, as no one dared to go to the scene and investigate for fear of a bomb attack,' a police officer in the district said.

Later on Tuesday near the scene of the first attack, a mother and her son were shot dead in a drive-by shooting.

On Monday, a 44-year-old soldier, a 73-year-old woman and a 23-year-old man were killed in separate attacks in Pattani and Narathiwat provinces.

More than 3,500 people have been killed by shadowy insurgent groups operating in Thailand's far south since January 2004, and successive governments have struggled to quell the unrest.

The three southern provinces were an ethnic Malay sultanate until largely Buddhist Thailand annexed the region in 1902, provoking decades of tensions.

An independent monitoring group said last week that after a lull in October, violence had escalated.

This month, two bombs in Yala province wounded 74 people in one of the biggest attacks on civilians since 2004. -- AFP