A former policeman killed 34 people, including 23 children, during a knife and gun rampage at a daycare centre in northeast Thailand on Thursday, police said, before later shooting dead his wife and child at home and turning his weapon on himself.
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 at the daycare centre in Uthai Sawan, a town 500 km (310 miles) northeast of Bangkok, were stabbed to death, police said.
The age range of children at the daycare centre was from two to five years, a local official told Reuters.
Police identified the attacker as a former member of the force who was dismissed from his post last year over drug allegations and he was facing trial on a drugs charge.
Police said the attacker’s weapon was a 9 mm pistol and it had been obtained legally.
“Then he got out and started killing anyone he met along the way with a gun or the knife until he got home. We surrounded his house and then found that he committed suicide in his home,” Damrongsak Kittiprapas told reporters.
Source: Somali National News Agency