Malaysia and Thailand will begin joint land and air patrols along their common border on Tuesday following attacks in southern Thailand which left six people dead, a top military official said today.

Defence Forces Chief General Mohamed Zahidi Zainuddin said the patrols were originally planned for early March but were brought forward following the attacks.

"Malaysia and Thailand will send equal strength of soldiers and aircraft," he was quoted as saying by the national Bernama news agency.

Zahidi said the army had been placed on high alert with more troops at the border as the attackers might try to cross over to Malaysia.

"We cannot rule out the possibility as our country is among the closest to Thailand. There is a possibility that they will sneak into the jungle on our side... we must be careful and be vigilant against such border crossings," he added.

Separatist insurgency

An attack on a military camp in Thailand's Narathiwat province last week left four soldiers dead while some 18 schools and two police checkpoints were torched. A day later two policemen were killed in Pattani as they tried to defuse a bomb.

Thailand's five Muslim-majority provinces in the far south, which border Malaysia, had been plagued by a low-level separatist insurgency for decades before it faded in the 1990s.

The Thai government has rejected claims that the violence was linked to regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) but acknowledged that separatists could be getting support from a Malaysian militant group tied to the Indonesia-based JI.

JI is blamed for several deadly attacks around the region including the Bali bombings which killed 202 people in 2002. - AFP