Suspected Muslim insurgents gunned down a Buddhist shop owner Sunday in continuing violence in southern Thailand, as Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra flew to the Muslim-majority region to attend a Buddhist religious ceremony.
Thaksin had said last week he would travel to the south - where more than 400 people have been killed this year - to launch a campaign to eradicate illegal weapons in the region.
The government blames the violence on Muslim militants seeking to carve out a separate state from predominantly Buddhist Thailand's three southernmost provinces, where Muslims are a majority.
Many Muslims in the region say they are fed up with decades of discrimination against them.
At almost the same time as Thaksin boarded a plane in Bangkok for the trip south, a gunman killed 60-year-old shop owner Woon Rattana as he arranged goods on his shelves, police Col. Paisan Chaiyabuth said.
The killing took place in Narathiwat province, scene of some of the south's bloodiest incidents, where Thaksin was to attend the Buddhist ceremony at the Chontaransinghe temple later Sunday.
Since a brutal crackdown on Muslim rioters by security forces on October 25, militants appear to be targeting traders, farmers, students and other Buddhists who are not associated with the government.
The assailants have left leaflets at some of the killing sites saying they were avenging the deaths of 85 "Muslim brothers" during and after the riot. Of the dead, 78 suffocated or were crushed to death after being piled into military trucks to be taken away to an army camp.
On Saturday evening, two men on a motorcycle fatally shot Sorn Ruennam, a 62-year-old Buddhist groundskeeper at the Mapoh Goddess Shrine in Yala province.
At about the same time, Chan Manopak, 40, the Buddhist owner of a fruit farm in Narathiwat, was shot and injured, also by two men on a motorcycle.
The violence has forced Thaksin to cancel his attendance at the November 20-21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Chile. But government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair said Sunday that Thaksin would take part in the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to be held in Laos this month.