YALA, Thailand (Reuters) – Gunmen killed 10 people and wounded 12 others when they opened fire with automatic weapons at a mosque during evening prayers in Thailand’s restive Muslim south, police said yesterday.

A rubber tapper was also shot dead and nine soldiers were wounded by a roadside bomb yesterday, one of the worst days of violence in months in the region bordering Malaysia where a shadowy insurgency has rumbled since 2004.

Police said at least five gunmen sprayed bullets into the mosque in the Cho Airong district of Narathiwat, one of three mainly Muslim provinces where more than 3,000 people have died in five years of near daily bomb and gun attacks.

“The gunmen sneaked into the mosque and opened fire as the victims kneeled on the floor praying,” regional army spokesman Colonel Prinya Chaidilok told Channel 11 television.