At least 38 people, most of them young children, were killed in a shootout at a kindergarten in the city of Uthai Sawan in northeast Thailand’s Nong Bua Lamphu province on Thursday, according to a police spokesman. A security agency statement later reported that the perpetrator of the shooting is a former police officer identified as Panya Khanrab, who committed suicide after perpetrating the massacre. Among his victims are his wife and son. A dozen people were injured. According to initial investigations, the author of the shots bought the gun legally.
The Thai government and police had previously reported that the attacker was being followed, but Thai media broke the news, which was later confirmed by police on their Facebook account, that the perpetrator of the massacre committed suicide after killing his family and had killed the other victims. This 34-year-old former police officer was expelled from the force in 2021 for drug possession.
Former police officer Panya Khamrab, suspected perpetrator of the school massacre, in a photo from the Thai investigative authority. HANDOUT (AFP)
About 30 children were at school when the gunman entered at lunchtime, Thai official Jidapa Boonsom told Portal. The man initially fired an automatic rifle at four or five staff members, including a teacher who was eight months pregnant, Jidapa reported. “At first people thought it was fireworks,” the official added.
After the massacre in this school, which usually takes children between the ages of two and five, the former police officer fled in a van. Later, also with one shot, he committed suicide.
Subscribe to EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe to
Images provided by Thai police show dozens of bodies scattered in different rooms of the education center. Videos posted on social media show bodies of children lying in pools of blood, apparently covered in sheets. Many of the injured were taken to Nong Bua Lamphu Hospital, which local media said has “urged” citizens to donate blood of any kind.
The images and videos circulating on social media also show relatives of the victims frantically walking around the hospital grounds.
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 guns, many of which were brought into the country through its porous borders.
Shootings in Thailand are rare, but in 2020 a soldier who failed to secure 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.
Follow all international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.