Suspected Muslim insurgents slit the throat of a rubber-tapper and shot dead two other men in the latest violence to hit Thailand's troubled far south, local police said Monday. The Buddhist rubber farmer was found with his throat slashed at a rubber plant in Yala province on Monday morning, they said. In neighbouring Pattani province a defence volunteer was seriously injured when he was shot while guarding Buddhist monks receiving alms the same morning. On Sunday night an assistant to a village chief and a defence volunteer, both Muslim, were killed in a drive-by shooting while walking home from work in Narathiwat province. The same evening a Muslim couple, were seriously injured in another drive-by shooting in Pattani, while in Yala a gardener was shot and wounded as he rode his motorbike home. More than 3,700 people have been killed since a separatist insurgency erupted in the region five years ago. Islamic rebels have targeted both Buddhists and Muslims, with victims ranging from security forces to civilians such as teachers and workers on rubber plantations. The southern provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani, Yala and parts of Songkhla made up an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until it was annexed by predominantly Buddhist Thailand in 1902, sparking decades of tension. 