Mourning relatives and family members wept as they clutched children’s toys and blankets at a daycare center in Thailand on Friday, a day after a former police officer killed 34 people, many of them young children, in one of the deadliest massacres in history. from the country.
On Thursday (6), the assailant killed 24 children aged two to five years – most with stab wounds – when he invaded a day care center in Uthai Sawan, a city located 500 km northeast of Bangkok, the capital. The massacre ended with the former police officer killing his wife and four-year-old son before committing suicide.
Three boys and one girl survived, police said on Friday. They were stabbed in the head, said Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, are being treated by neurosurgeons and are in good health.
A police officer told Reuters that autopsies showed the children had been cut with a large knife, sometimes several times, and the adults had been shot.
Police identified the perpetrator as Panya Kamrab, a 34-year-old former police officer who was removed from his position as lieutenant colonel last year because of drug problems. He was facing a trial for possession of methamphetamine and had been in court hours before the attack, a police spokesman told Thai PBS.
An autopsy on Friday indicated he was not high on the day of the attack, said national police chief Damrongsak Kittipraphat. “The reasons are probably unemployment, lack of money and family problems,” he said, adding that the attacker and his wife had “longstanding problems.”
“I don’t know (why he did it), but he was under a lot of pressure,” the assailant’s mother told Nation TV, citing debts her son incurred and drug use.
Kittisak Polprakan, a witness, said he saw the attacker calmly exit the daycare, a pink one-story building surrounded by lawn and small palm trees, after the massacre “as if he was just taking a normal walk.”
During the school funeral on Friday, some relatives fainted and had to be rescued by doctors. After the ceremony at the daycare, part of the mourners went to the Sri Uthai temple, where at least 11 coffins were to be buried. King Maha Vajiralongkorn visited the hospital where the wounded were taken, according to photographs released by the government’s public affairs office.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha left flowers at the day care center and held a moment of silence before meeting the victims’ families elsewhere. His spokesman, Anucha Burapachaisri, said the government would do its best to take care of the family members and said the prime minister asked everyone to “be strong to overcome this great loss”.
In a message, the Vatican wrote that Pope Francis was deeply saddened by the “horrific attack”, which he condemned as an “act of unspeakable violence against innocent children”.
About 30 children were at the scene during the massacre. The amount is smaller than usual due to heavy rain, according to civil servant Jidapa Boonsom, who was working at a nearby location at the time of the attack.
She reported that the former police officer initially attacked four or five daycare workers, including a teacher who was eight months pregnant, stabbed to death. At first, people mistook the sound of gunfire for fireworks.
The former police officer then forced his way into a locked room where the children slept, Boonsom said, and stabbed them. Videos shared on social media show sheets covering what appear to be children’s bodies in pools of blood.
According to the authorities, the attacker also ran over several people while fleeing the scene of the crime. In addition to the dead, the attack left at least 12 wounded, three of them in serious condition.
The episode is one of the worst solo attacks involving children in history. In 2011, in Norway, the far-right militant Anders Brevik killed 69 people, mostly teenagers, in a holiday camp organized by Labor youth.
Other cases include the 1996 Dunblane massacre in Scotland, in which 16 children died; and the one in Uvalde, Texas, this year, in which 19 children were killed.
Thailand is one of the countries with the most weapons in circulation in the world, and officials have long been concerned about the potential for gun violence.
A study by Gun Policy, a non-profit organization based at the University of Sydney, points out that in 2017 there were 15 guns for every 100 citizens of the country. It’s much less than in the US — where, that same year, the ratio was 120 guns for every 100 citizens — but a higher rate than most Asian countries.
Thailand is also one of the nations with one of the highest gun homicide rates on the continent and the largest market for firearms smuggling in Southeast Asia, followed by Cambodia and Vietnam. Experts say many of the illegal weapons come from neighboring countries.
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