Three dead in Thailand attack

BANGKOK, March 18 (UPI) -- An attack on an Islamic school in Thailand has resulted in the deaths of at least three young students.

Police said another seven teenagers were injured when explosives were thrown into into a school in Songhkhla province in southern Thailand and the assailants opened fire with guns in the sleeping quarters, the BBC reported Sunday.

Police blamed the late Saturday incident on Muslim rebels but villagers accused the Thailand military of carrying out the attack. Hundreds of people later protested by blocking the road to the school.

Violence has claimed about 2,000 lives in Islam-dominated southern Thailand since January 2004.