Quote:BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Hundreds of schools in Thailand's restive south will shut their doors in response to increasingly vicious attacks by suspected Muslim insurgents against teachers and schools, an official said Saturday.
The closure, which begins Monday, affects all 336 primary and secondary schools in the province of Pattani, where two teachers were fatally shot by suspected insurgents in the past two days.


In one of the killings, attackers shot a school principal Friday, and then set his body on fire. The principal became the 59th teacher or school official killed in three years of violence, said Bunsom Thongsriprai, president of the Teachers' Association in Pattani.


"Teachers can't bear what has happened," Bunsom said. "They are paranoid, worried and afraid." He said the province's schools, which teach about 100,000 students, will reopen when teachers feel safe.


More than 1,800 people have died from violence in Thailand's three southernmost, Muslim-majority provinces -- Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat -- since an Islamic insurgency flared in January 2004.


<b>Teachers have always been occasional targets, seen by insurgents as representatives of the government and easy targets. But recently, teachers and schools have been attacked on an almost daily basis.</b>


On Thursday, 96 schools across Yala were ordered closed as a safety precaution after a school was burned down the day before. It was one of several schools in the province recently targeted by arsonists.