Thai police and soldiers killed at least 24 people, most of them youths, following a series of coordinated dawn attacks on Wednesday on police outposts in the country's restive Muslim south, officials said.  

"They attacked five of our police booths in Yala Province this morning and we killed 22 of them," Colonel Prinya Kwanyuen, head of Yala Province police, was quoted as saying. The largely Muslim province of Yala is 780 miles south of the capital Bangkok.

One soldier died in one of the attacks.

In nearby Pattani Province, rebels attacked at least three security outposts, killing one soldier. Two bandits were shot dead by police, officials said.

(China Daily April 28, 2004)