Ex-policeman shoots 22 children dead in nursery

CHILDREN as young as two were among at least 34 people gunned down today when a former police officer opened fire at a nursery in Thailand.

Twenty-two youngsters were among those massacred at the centre in the north-eastern town of Uthai Sawan when the gunman burst in and carried out the horror attack.

He first shot four or five staff, including a teacher who was eight months pregnant, said district official Jidapa Boonsom.

“At first people thought it was fireworks,” she added.

Videos posted on social media showed sheets covering what appeared to be the bodies of children at the nursery in the town, in the province of Nong Bua Lamphu.

District police official Chakkraphat Wichitvaidya told reporters that witnesses said the gunman was also seen wielding a knife.

The Daily News newspaper reported that after fleeing the scene of the attack he returned to his home and killed himself along with his wife and child.

Police confirmed he had shot himself, and said he had been discharged from the service for drug-related reasons.

The Bangkok Post ran a picture of the suspected gunman which it said had been supplied by authorites, and the killer was named by deputy national police chief Torsak Sukwimol as Panya Khamrab, according to the newspaper’s report.

The police chief said at least another 12 people were injured in the shootings, eight of them seriously.

The gunman’s motive for the massacre was unknown.

Police posted a Facebook message saying that the local hospital urgently needed blood donations for wounded victims.

Earlier, authorities said a manhunt had been under way for the gunman, and a government spokesman said the country’s prime minister Prayuth Chan-och had alerted all agencies to catch the culprit.

The prime minister described the attack as “shocking” and sent his condolences to the families of the victims, while ordering urgent treatment for the wounded.

Mass shootings are rare in Thailand, even though the rate of gun ownership is high compared with that other countries in the region, and illegal weapons are common.

In 2020, a soldier angry over a property deal that went wrong killed at least 29 people and wounded 57 in a rampage that spanned four locations.

This is shocking... I send my condolences to the families of the victims and the wounded Thai premier Prayuth Chan-och