Pattani, Thailand - Suspected Muslim insurgents on Friday ambushed and killed three Thai soldiers and wounded another on the 46th anniversary of the Pattani separatist movement.

Amid beefed-up security throughout the deep-South region, separatists ambushed a Thai military patrol in the Srisakorn district of Narathiwat province, 700 kilometres south of Bangkok, leaving three dead and one wounded after a ten minute gunbattle, said Army Colonel Mandate Shinawatra, deputy commander of the regional special task force.

Friday marks the 46th anniversary of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional Melayu Pattani (BRN), a movement that has been fighting to turn the majority Muslim three provinces of Thailand's deep South into a separate state since March 1963.

The three-province region bordering Malaysia has lost 3,700 people to separatist-related violence over the past five years.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva announced Thursday that another 4,000 troops would be dispatched to the area, where already nearly 3,700 people have fallen victim to escalating violence over the past five years.

Of the 300,000 Thai Buddhists who used to inhabit Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala provinces, about 70,000 have left since separatists raided an army depot in January 2004, killing four soldiers and making off with 300 weapons, leading to an escalation of the region's long-simmering separatist struggle.

The incident sparked a series of brutal government crackdowns on the separatist movement, which turned much of the 2 million-strong population, 80 per cent of whom are Muslim, against the central government.

Although the region, which centuries ago was the independent Islamic sultanate of Pattani, was conquered by Bangkok about 200 years ago, it has never wholly submitted to Thai rule.

Analysts said the region's Muslim population, the majority of whom speak a Malay dialect and follow Malay customs, feel alienated from the predominantly Buddhist Thai state. (dpa)