By TASSANEE VEJPONGSA and DAVID RISING
UTHAI SAWAN, Thailand (AP) — Relatives wailed and a few collapsed as they grieved Friday over the small coffins carrying youngsters slain by a fired police officer who stormed a day care heart in rural Thailand throughout naptime.
Thailand’s deadliest mass killing left just about nobody untouched within the small group nestled amongst rice paddies in one of many nation’s poorest areas. Grief additionally gripped the remainder of the nation, the place flags had been lowered to half-staff and schoolchildren mentioned prayers to honor the lifeless.
At least 24 of the 36 folks killed in Thursday’s grisly gun and knife assault had been youngsters, principally preschoolers.
“I cried until I had no more tears coming out of my eyes. They are running through my heart,” mentioned Seksan Sriraj, 28, whose pregnant spouse was as a result of give start this month and who labored on the Young Children’s Development Center in Uthai Sawan.
“My wife and my child have gone to a peaceful place. I am alive and will have to live. If I can’t go on, my wife and my child will be worried about me, and they won’t be reborn in the next life,” he mentioned.
A stream of individuals, together with Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, different authorities representatives and family themselves, left flowers on the day care heart on Friday. By afternoon, bouquets of white roses and carnations lined the wall outdoors, together with 5 tiny juice packing containers, luggage of corn chips and a stuffed animal.
Later, family acquired the our bodies on the native Buddhist temple. As the small, white coffins had been opened, some screamed, whereas others fainted and had been revived with smelling salts. For a time, the grounds outdoors the temple had been crowded with folks overcome by grief.
“It was just too much. I can’t accept this,” mentioned Oy Yodkhao, 51, sitting on a bamboo mat within the oppressive warmth as family gave her water and gently mopped her forehead.
Her 4-year-old grandson Tawatchai Sriphu was killed, and he or she mentioned she anxious for the kid’s siblings. The household of rice farmers is shut, with three generations dwelling beneath one roof.
Som-Mai Pitfai collapsed when she noticed the physique of her 3-year-old niece.
“When I looked, I saw she had been slashed in the face with a knife,” the 58-year-old mentioned, holding again tears.
King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida had been anticipated later within the day to go to hospitals, the place seven of the ten folks wounded stay. A vigil was deliberate in a central park in Bangkok, the nation’s capital.
Police recognized the attacker as Panya Kamrap, 34, a former police sergeant fired earlier this 12 months due to a drug cost involving methamphetamine. He had been as a result of seem in court docket Friday. An worker instructed a Thai TV station that Panya’s son had attended the day care however hadn’t been there for a few month.
Panya took his personal life after killing his spouse and baby at house.
In an interview with Amarin TV, Satita Boonsom, who labored on the day care heart, mentioned workers locked the glass entrance door to the constructing after seeing the assailant shoot a toddler and his father out entrance. But the gunman shot and kicked his approach by way of it.
The youngsters, primarily preschoolers, had been taking a day nap, and images taken by first responders confirmed their tiny our bodies nonetheless mendacity on blankets. In some photographs, slashes to the victims’ faces and gunshots to their heads might be seen.
Satita mentioned she and three different lecturers climbed the middle’s fence to flee and name police and search assist. By the time she returned, the youngsters had been lifeless. She mentioned one baby who was lined by a blanket survived the assault, apparently as a result of the assailant assumed he was lifeless.
She mentioned the middle often has round 70 to 80 youngsters, however there have been fewer on the time of the assault as a result of the semester had ended for older youngsters and rain prevented a college bus from working.
“They wouldn’t have survived,” she mentioned.
Satita added that the attacker’s son hadn’t been to the day care heart lately as a result of he was sick.
One of the youngest survivors is a 3-year-old boy who was driving a tricycle near his mom and grandmother when the assailant started slashing them with the knife. The mom died from her wounds, and the boy and grandmother had been being handled at hospitals, in line with native media.
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 folks in comparison with solely 0.3 in Singapore and 0.25 in Japan. That’s nonetheless far decrease than the U.S. price of 120.5 per 100 folks, in line with a 2017 survey by Australia’s GunPolicy.org nonprofit group.
Support and condolences poured in from all over the world. “All Australians send their love and condolences,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tweeted. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken known as the violence “senseless and heartbreaking.”
Pope Francis supplied prayers for all these affected by such “unspeakable violence.”
“I’m profoundly saddened by the heinous shooting at a childcare centre in Thailand,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres tweeted.
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 folks and holding off safety forces for some 16 hours earlier than finally being killed by them.
Nearly 60 others had been wounded in that assault. Its dying toll surpassed that of the beforehand worst assault on civilians, a 2015 bombing at a shrine in Bangkok that killed 20 folks. It was allegedly carried out by human traffickers in retaliation for a crackdown on their community.
Last month, a clerk shot co-workers at Thailand’s Army War College in Bangkok, killing two and wounding one other earlier than he was arrested.
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Associated Press writers Chalida Ekvitthayavechnukul, Elaine Kurtenbach and Grant Peck in Bangkok and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
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See extra AP Asia-Pacific protection at https://apnews.com/hub/asia-pacific
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
