BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand feared a spike in violence in its Muslim deep south on Friday after an unknown rebel group announced a "ceasefire" dismissed by some analysts as a hoax that might enrage real fighters on the ground.

The surprise announcement by the so-called Thailand United Southern Underground on Thursday was rubbished by security experts and ex-army commanders who said its leaders had no influence in the region, where more than 3,000 people have been killed since 2004.

"It's a hoax and it could make matters much worse," Sunai Phasuk of Human Rights Watch told Reuters.

"People in the south are angry and depressed. They expect there will be more attacks because local rebel commanders will take it as an insult to their struggle," he said.

Former army officers in the region said the "ceasefire," which an ex-defence minister said he had negotiated with 11 insurgent groups, expressed similar fears.

"Active groups may intensify their attacks on troops and civilians to show that they don't listen to this group," Kitti Rattanachaya, a former southern army commander, told Thai TV.

The shadowy rebels have never revealed themselves publicly or claimed responsibility for the near daily bomb and gun attacks in the major rubber-producing region bordering Malaysia.

Three hours after Thursday's broadcast, rebels wounded one soldier in an ambush on an army patrol in Yala, one of three southernmost provinces where Malay Muslims make up the majority of the population.

"We won't let our guard down because of that ceasefire claim," army spokesman Colonel Acra Tiproch said of the 30,000 soldiers and police fighting the low-level insurgency.

"We will continue our pro-active, offensive operations -- search and destroy and arrest -- for peace in the south."

"DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH"

Army chief General Anupong Paochinda, who said he was unaware of the ceasefire before it was broadcast on army TV, identified the group's leader as Malipeng Khan, a separatist active in the 1980s who had failed to unify insurgent factions.

Separatist rebels waged a low-level guerrilla war in the densely forested region throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but their campaign petered out in the 1990s after an amnesty offer.

That struggle was dominated by groups such as the Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO), which has been largely dormant since the 1980s, with some of its leaders now living abroad.

The old guard has been replaced by a new generation of rebel leaders and groups such as the Barisan Revolusi Nasional Coordinasi, which analysts say is most responsible for the current violence.

"Don't hold your breath. This is not the real deal," U.S. professor and security expert Zachary Abuza wrote on a blog.

"Members of PULO have attempted to speak on behalf of the insurgents and negotiate with the government in the past. This has always led to a spike in violence and attacks on the previous generation of militants."

Thailand's Nation newspaper, which published a story headlined "Hope or Hoax," quoted a PULO official as saying they knew nothing of the men who announced the ceasefire.

Bangkok has flirted with talks with separatist groups in the past, but most analysts said it was illogical for the insurgents to agree to an unconditional ceasefire. They are not seriously under pressure from Thai security forces, which have struggled to find a strategy to stop the violence.

Thaksin's flip-flopping between heavy-handed crackdowns and offers of millions of dollars in development aid to one of Thailand's poorest regions did not bring calm, either.

After Thaksin was ousted in a 2006 coup, then Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont apologized for Thaksin's iron-fist approach, but his "hearts and minds" campaign failed to stop the bloodshed.

Last year was the bloodiest in the far south since the insurgency began, with nearly 800 people killed.

(Additional reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat and Nopporn Wong-Anan; Editing by David Fogarty)

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