More than 4,000 people have been killed and 7,000 injured in separatist attacks in southern Thailand in the past six years, local media reported Thursday.

Bangkok Post online quoted an official report as saying that 11, 047 violent incidents had occurred in the three southern border provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat since 2004.

The report, released Wednesday by the Southern Border Province Police Bureau (SPB), said among the violent incidents, 7,984 were considered the work of southern separatist militants. The attacks killed 4,137 people and injured 7,135.

Seventy-one insurgency-related attacks were reported in the three provinces last month alone, leaving 39 people dead and 57 injured, it said. Thirty-seven of the attacks were shootings and the rest were bomb attacks.

The latest attack took place Wednesday in which a 57-year-old rubber tapper was killed in a drive-by shooting in Pattani's Kapho district.

Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat provinces were part of an independent sultanate known as Patani until annexed in 1909 by Thailand.