By TASSANEE VEJPONGSA
UTHAI SAWAN, Thailand (AP) — Hundreds of mourners and victims’ households gathered Tuesday night to look at flames burn from rows of makeshift furnaces at cremation ceremonies for the younger kids and others who died in final week’s mass killings at a day care middle in Thailand’s rural northeast.
The households bid their ultimate goodbyes at a Buddhist temple a brief distance from the Young Children’s Development Center within the city of Uthai Sawan, the place a former policeman, who was fired from his job earlier this yr for utilizing medication, barged in final Thursday and shot and stabbed kids and their caregivers.
The police sergeant, Panya Kamrap, ended up killing 36 individuals, 24 of them kids, on this small farming group earlier than taking his personal life. It was the largest mass killing by a person in Thailand’s historical past.
The ceremonies for many of the victims had been held collectively to spare households from having to attend lengthy hours for successive cremations to be accomplished, Phra Kru Adisal Kijjanuwat, the abbot of the Rat Samakee temple, stated.
Gasoline fed the flames of the charcoal-fueled open-air pyres because the sky darkened on the temple.
On Tuesday morning, lots of the younger victims’ our bodies had been outfitted as medical doctors, troopers or astronauts — what they needed to be once they grew up — earlier than they had been to be cremated within the night.
Volunteer rescue employee Attarith Muangmangkang stated his group organized for the costumes and assisted the households with altering the victims’ outfits Tuesday.
“The more we talked (to the families), we realized that these children also had dreams of becoming doctors, soldiers, astronauts, or police officers,” Attarith stated. “We provided those uniforms for them.”
Mourners additionally positioned kids’s toys, candles, and incense sticks in entrance of the victims’ portraits on the temples.
Petchrung Sriphirom, 73, was one among many native residents who traveled to the temple on Tuesday to supply condolences to the households and make a small donation to assist with funeral prices, which is a standard Thai customized.
“I just want to help our friends and share our thoughts with them,” stated Petchrung. “We are not talking about money or anything but rather sharing our thoughts and feelings as a fellow human being,”
The perpetrator’s physique was cremated Saturday in a neighboring province after temples in Uthai Sawan refused to host his funeral, Thai media reported.
Mass shootings are uncommon however not remarkable in Thailand, which has one of many highest civilian gun possession charges in Asia, with 15.1 weapons per 100 individuals in comparison with solely 0.3 in Singapore and 0.25 in Japan. That’s nonetheless far decrease than the U.S. charge of 120.5 per 100 individuals, in keeping with a 2017 survey by Australia’s GunPolicy.org nonprofit group.
Thailand’s earlier worst mass killing concerned a disgruntled soldier who opened hearth in and round a mall within the northeastern metropolis of Nakhon Ratchasima in 2020, killing 29 individuals and holding off safety forces for some 16 hours earlier than ultimately being killed by them.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”