Two Buddhist men and a woman have been killed in separate attacks by Muslim fighters in the south of Thailand, an area that has suffered violence for three years.
One man was beheaded after being shot dead along with his wife while working at a rubber plantation in Yala province, police sources said.
Kittiphong Phuduangjit, a police officer, said that after shooting the man three times in the chest, the assailants severed his head and left it a few metres from his body with a note that said "You crazy Buddhists. We will continue to kill you all unless you leave our land."
The note was signed by a group that called itself the Pattani fighters, a reference to one of the region's troubled provinces, Kittiphong said.
Two other notes were left near the body with similar messages.
In a separate incident a third Buddhist victim was killed by a gunman on a motorcycle, police sources said.
Drive-by shootings and bombings occur almost daily in Thailand's three southernmost Muslim-majority provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani.
More than 1,900 people have been killed since fighting flared amid an Islamic insurgency in January 2004.
Police, soldiers and others viewed as collaborators with the government are targeted, along with Buddhists.