An ex-policeman has killed at least 38 people, most of them children, in a gun and knife attack at a pre-school daycare centre in north-east Thailand.
Police say he then killed himself and his family after a manhunt following the attack in Nong Bua Lamphu province.
Children and adults are among the casualties at the nursery – police say the attacker shot and stabbed his victims before fleeing the scene.
The former officer, aged 34, was sacked in June for drug use, police said.
A teacher who survived the attack told Thailand’s Thairath TV the gunman used to drop off his child at the nursery and had seemed polite. A motive for the attack remains unclear.
At least 22 children were among the dead in the mass killing in the town of Utthai Sawan. Some victims aged as young as two were attacked as they slept. A dozen people who were injured have been taken to Nong Bua Lamphu district hospital.
“The shooter came in around lunchtime and shot four or five officials at the childcare centre first,” a local official Jidapa Boonsom, who was working nearby, told Reuters news agency. One of them was a teacher who was eight months pregnant,
“At first people thought it was fireworks,” she said, adding the gunman then forced entry to a locked room where children were sleeping.
Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha described the shooting as “a shocking event.” BBC
