BANGKOK, May 31 (Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed eight Thai soldiers and suspected militants shot dead five Muslims praying at a mosque in the country's rebellious Muslim south on Thursday, an army spokesman said.

The troops were returning to their base in the southern Yala province, one of three areas where more than 2,100 people have been killed in a three-year-old separatist insurgency, after helping to disperse Muslim protesters blocking a road.

"After the troops moved them and were returning back to their base, a roadside bomb exploded, severely damaging the pickup truck and killing eight soldiers instantly," army spokesman Colonel Acra Tiproch said.

Another two soldiers were wounded and sent to hospital.

About an hour later, gunmen travelling in a truck opened fire on a mosque in the southern province of Songkhla, killing five Muslims and wounding two, Acra said.

"This was the work of militants who want to accuse the authorities of doing it," he said.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the daily gun or bomb attacks in the deep south, annexed by predominately Buddhist Thailand a century ago, where most people speak a Malay dialect.

Earlier on Thursday, six Muslim youths were detained after police raided a rented house in the southern city of Hat Yai and found bomb-making equipment, police said.

The young men were suspected of being involved in a spate of small bomb attacks last Sunday, which killed one and wounded nine, police said.

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