Bangkok (TIP): A former policeman killed 37 persons, including 22 children, in a knife-and-gun rampage at a daycare centre in Thailand on October 6. He later shot dead his wife and child at their home before turning his weapon on himself, the police said, identifying the suspect as 34-year-old PanyaKamrap. In one of the world’s worst child death tolls in a massacre by a single killer in recent history, most of the children who died in UthaiSawan, a town 500 km northeast of Bangkok, were stabbed to death, the police said. The age range of children was from two to five years, a local official said.

The police said the attacker was a former member of the force who was dismissed from his post last year over drug allegations and he was facing trial. The man had been in court earlier in the day and had then gone to the daycare centre to collect his child, said police spokesperson PaisalLuesomboon. When he did not find his child there, he began the killing spree, Paisal said. “He started shooting, slashing, killing children.” Videos posted on social media showed sheets covering what appeared to be the bodies of children lying in pools of blood in the garden of the daycare centre. When the attacker arrived, about 30 children were at the facility, fewer than usual, as heavy rain had kept many of them away, district official JidapaBoonsom said. “The shooter came in around lunch time and shot four or five officials at the centre first,” Jidapa said. The attacker forced his way into a locked room where the children were sleeping, Jidapa said, adding that a teacher who was eight months pregnant was also stabbed to death. The massacre is among the worst involving children killed by one person. In Norway, Anders Brevik killed 69 persons, mostly teenagers, at a summer camp in 2011, while the child death toll in other cases include 16 at Dunblane in Scotland in 1996 and 19 at a school in Uvalde, Texas, this year. The Beslan school hostage crisis in Russia in 2004 saw 186 children killed by a group of hostage takers. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha, in a statement on Facebook, called Thursday’s shooting a “shocking incident”. Gun laws are strict in Thailand, where possession of an illegal firearm carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years. But ownership is high compared with some other countries in Southeast Asia. The police, however said the gun used in the shooting had been obtained legally. Mass shootings in Thailand remain rare, although in 2020, a soldier angry over a property deal gone sour killed at least 29 persons and wounded 57 in a rampage that spanned four locations. — Reuters