Thailand mourned on Friday after 37 people were killed, most of them young children, in a brutal gun and knife attack on a preschool in the northeast of the country.
The attacker, a former police officer, opened fire around noon on Thursday and stabbed children as they slept at the center in Na Klang district of Nong Bua Lamphu province, police and witnesses said.
According to the police, the perpetrator is a former police officer. Photo: THAILAND’S CENTRAL INVESTIGATION/AFP/Getty ImagesAs he left the children’s room, the attacker drove his car towards passers-by and shot at them. He then returned home, where he shot himself, his wife and child.
The Thai government on Friday ordered all Thai flags to be flown at half-mast while Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha was due to visit the area in the afternoon.
“This must not happen,” he said on Thursday. “I feel deep sorrow for the victims and their families.”
King Maha Vajiralongkorn was due to visit the city later on Friday to meet families affected by the tragedy.
Rescue workers arrange coffins with the bodies of victims. Photo: Athit Perawongmetha/Portal“All Thai people and all people around the world who know about this… will be so depressed and sad,” said Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul.
Families sat in rows in front of the center on Friday morning, many wearing black. Beside them lay small coffins, yellow, light blue, and white decorated with gold.
On Thursday, some family members of those killed in the attack stayed at the scene of the shooting late into the night. Mental health workers sat with them, Thailand’s TBS television reported.
“He shot right through the door”
A teacher told the broadcaster the attacker got out of a car and immediately shot a man who was eating lunch outside, then fired more shots. When the attacker paused to reload, the teacher had a chance to run inside.
“I ran to the back, the children were asleep,” said the young woman, who did not give her name, and choked on her words. “The kids were two or three years old.”
A witness told ThaiPBS she asked him to stop. “He came up to me and I begged him for mercy, I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
Another witness said the daycare staff locked the door, but the suspect shot inside.
“The deceased teacher had a child in her arms,” the witness, whose name was not released, told Thai TV station Kom Chad Luek. “I didn’t think he was going to kill kids, but he shot the door and shot right through it.”
Paramedics described harrowing scenes.
“It’s a scene nobody wants to see. From the first step I walked in, it felt devastating,” Piyalak Kingkaew, an emergency responder who led the first responder team, told Portal.
“We’ve been through this before, but this incident is very upsetting because they are young children.”
At least ten people were injured, six of them seriously, according to police spokesman Archayon Kraithong. Among the injured were three boys and a girl.
A day after the attack, the day care center is empty. Photo: Sakchai Lalit/APMass shootings are rare in Thailand, but gun ownership rates are high. The attack comes two years after a mass shooting at a shopping center in Nakhon Ratchasima by a soldier angry at his superiors.
In an editorial on Friday, the Bangkok Post said: “Both cases raise questions about the recruitment process of the army and the Royal Thai Police (RTP).”
“People will particularly want to know how RTP hired this man who has reportedly admitted to his manager that he had been on narcotics since he was young. He has also been fined multiple times for bad behavior.”
Police identified the attacker as Panya Khamrab, a 34-year-old former police lieutenant colonel who had been fired from the police force since January for possession of methamphetamine and was formally released in June. He had appeared in court the previous Thursday on a drug charge and was due to appear again on Friday.
Officials said the results of an autopsy would determine whether or not he had been using drugs before the attack. “Primarily, we think it’s the drugs and the stress [of his court appearance]’ said Police Chief Damrongsak Kittiprapat.
“I don’t know (why he did that) but he was under a lot of pressure,” Panya’s mother told Nation TV, citing the debt the former police officer had accumulated and his drug use.
Politicians around the world have sent their condolences, including British Prime Minister Liz Truss and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “I am deeply saddened by the heinous shootings at a day care center in Thailand. Learning centers should be places where children feel safe, never attacked. My condolences go to the families of the victims and the people of Thailand.”