A former police officer has killed at least 35 people, including 22 children, in an attack on a Thai kindergarten, then killed his family and killed himself in one of the worst massacres ever perpetrated in Thailand.
The author of the attack, a 34-year-old former police officer, armed with a rifle, a pistol and a knife, broke into a kindergarten in Na Klang, the provincial police reported, among the deceased there are 22 children, between two and three years old.
The former police officer fled the daycare by car and hit several pedestrians, according to the colonel. After the massacre, the attacker killed his wife and his son, and finally committed suicide. Vijitraithaya said there were 12 injuries, three of them seriously.
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha expressed his condolences to the families and ordered an urgent investigation into this “horrible” tragedy. The leader asked the chief of police “to go to the scene and speed up the investigations.”
The attacker, identified as Panya Khamrab, was fired from his post as a police lieutenant colonel last year for a drug problem.
“He tried to run over other people on the way. He collided with a motorcycle and two people were injured. I hurried away,” said a witness, Paweena Purichan, 31, who was riding a motorcycle toward her store.
“There was blood everywhere,” he added. According to this witness, the attacker was known in the area as a drug addict.
In video footage of the scene, several bereaved families could be seen outside the nursery.
