At least 60 people were injured Tuesday when twin bomb blasts ripped through a local government office and a busy teashop in the insurgency-hit south of Thailand, police said.

A car bomb hit at about 11:15 am (0415 GMT) outside a district office where village heads were meeting in Narathiwat province, a local police officer told AFP, and minutes later a bomb went off at a nearby tea shop.

`More than 60 injured people were hospitalised at Sukhirin district hospital and Sungai Kolok district hospital,` said the police officer, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

`No deaths have been reported yet,` he added.

The first bomb hit as people gathered at a fruit market opposite the Sukhirin district office in an area near the border with Malaysia.

In separate incidents, a 47-year-old religious teacher was shot dead in Narathiwat province on Monday night, while a 41-year-old man was killed later in a similar attack in nearby Pattani province, police said.

Tuesday`s twin explosions come a week after new Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat visited the Muslim-majority far south and told reporters that the five-year-long insurgency appeared to have eased.

More than 3,400 people have been killed in rebel attacks by shadowy insurgent groups operating in the region since January 2004 and successive governments have struggled to quell the unrest.

Thailand`s three far southern provinces were an ethnic Malay sultanate until mainly Buddhist Thailand annexed the region in 1902, provoking decades of tensions.