At least 38 people, most of whom were young children, were killed in a shooting at a nursery school in the town of Uthai Sawan in Thailand’s northeastern Nong Bua Lamphu province on Thursday, according to a police spokesman. A statement from the security body reported after that the author of the shots is a former police officer, identified as Panya Khanrab, who committed suicide after perpetrating the massacre. His victims include his wife and his son. A dozen people were injured. According to the first investigations, the author of the shots bought the weapon legally.
The Thai government and police had previously reported that the attacker was being persecuted, but the Thai media advanced the news, later confirmed by the police on their Facebook account, that the perpetrator of the massacre had committed suicide after kill his family and the other victims. This 34-year-old former police officer had been expelled from the force in 2021 for drug possession.
About 30 children were at the school when the gunman entered at lunchtime, Thai official Jidapa Boonsom told Reuters. The man fired an automatic rifle first at four or five staff members, including a teacher who was eight months pregnant, Jidapa reported. “At first, people thought they were fireworks,” added this official.
After perpetrating the massacre at this school, which generally welcomes children between the ages of two and five, the former police officer fled in a van. Later, also with a shot, he committed suicide.
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The images provided by the Thai police show dozens of bodies scattered throughout different rooms of the educational center. Videos posted on social media show what appear to be the bodies of children covered in sheets, lying in pools of blood. Many of the injured have been transferred to the Nong Bua Lamphu hospital, which has “urgently” requested that citizens donate blood of all types, according to local media.
The images and videos that circulate on social networks also show relatives of the victims, in despair, around the hospital compound.
Thailand’s gun ownership rate is high compared to other countries in the region, although official figures do not include a large number of illegal weapons, many of which have been brought into the country through its porous borders.
Shootings in Thailand are rare, but in 2020, a soldier who had failed to finalize a real estate deal he hoped would go through killed at least 29 people and wounded 57 others in an attack in four different locations.
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