A Buddhist has been beheaded in Muslim-majority southern Thailand, police said yesterday, the fourth decapitation of a Buddhist since violence erupted in the region 18 months ago. Police found the body of the 59-year-old rubber plantation employee at his hut in Yaha district of Yala province late on Sunday.

“We believe it must have been the work of those militants,” a police officer said by telephone, declining to give further details of the incident in the largely Malay-speaking region, where more than 700 people have died in the violence. No group has claimed responsibility for the violence. The Muslim-majority region has a century-long history of violent separatism from Bangkok.

The first Buddhist rubber tapper was decapitated in May last year. His killers left a note saying they had acted in revenge for the arrest of innocent Muslims. In November, two Buddhist men were beheaded in revenge for the deaths of 85 Muslim protesters in army custody, most of them by suffocation a month earlier. Three policemen and two civilians were wounded on Monday when a 5 kg (11 lbs) bomb hidden in a motorcycle and triggered by a mobile phone went off in a park in the nearby tourist town of Sungai Kolok as people were exercising.

The government in the mostly Buddhist country has imposed martial law in parts of the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, which all border Malaysia, at the same time as offering lavish development aid and regional assistance. Shootings, bombings and arson attacks mainly against official, Buddhist targets have become daily occurrences.