HANOI, May 12 (AFP) - Gunmen in communist Laos shot dead four people in a brazen daylight ambush thought to be linked to the drugs trade, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Three of the victims died in their pickup truck after it was sprayed with bullets from an AK-47, the Vientiane Times reported.

The driver of the pickup was shot dead in a nearby rice field as he tried to flee the Monday morning attack in the capital, Vientiane, the paper said, identifying the victims as two men and their girlfriends.

Police quoted by the newspaper said the victims were carrying two AK-47s, a pair of shotguns, grenades and methamphetamine.

"But evidently they didn't have an opportunity to use their weapons during the attack," the report quoted Vientiane Police Chief Bounthieng Chanthamongkhon as saying.

"We assume that their dispute was associated with market share in the drugs trade."

Local residents say a crime of such extreme violence is rare in communist Laos, where security is tightly controlled.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says on its website that since the mid-1990s the landlocked nation -- one of the poorest countries in Asia -- has become a transit point for the regional trafficking of amphetamines and other illicit drugs.