ABOUT 3000 teachers rallied in Thailand?s restive Muslim south yesterday to demand better security after a Buddhist teacher was shot and killed this week.

?We?ve submitted various requests, but the first and foremost is our safety,? said Tawat Humm, president of the Federation of Teachers in Narathiwat province, one of three southern provinces hit by a wave of violence since January.

?We would like to see more security personnel and more frequent patrols to schools because promises from the authorities have not been met,? Tawat said by telephone from the rally at a school in Pattani province.

More than 200 people have been killed in violence in the three predominantly Muslim provinces since January, raising fears of a resurgence of a separatist insurgency that plagued the region in the 1970s and 80s but largely petered out in the 1990s.

Government schools and teachers were for years the target of Muslim separatists who see the schools, which teach in the Thai language, as symbols of the central government in the Malay-speaking region on the border with Muslim Malaysia.

Education Minister Adisai Bodharamik flew to the south yesterday to give moral support to teachers after gunmen shot dead a 49-year-old teacher at an Islamic school in Pattani on Monday.

The teacher was killed in broad daylight despite stepped up security at schools, where at least 1,000 soldiers and police have been deployed since the new school year began in mid-May.