Pattani, Thailand  - Suspected separatists on Saturday shot dead two college students and burned their bodies in Thailand's violence-ridden, majority-Muslim southern province of Pattani, police said.

Brothers Hiran and Arun Sukmak were attacked as they drove a motorcycle from the Yaling district to Pattani city, where they were scheduled to take an exam at the provincial university, Yaling police said.

The assailants shot the students with pistols and then burned their bodies, notching up the latest atrocity to hit Thailand's deep South, the three-province region bordering Malaysia that has lost 3,700 people to separatist-related violence over the past five years.

The brothers were Thai Buddhists attending Pattani University.

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)