Teachers and children have been killed after a student opened fire at a secondary school in Thailand on Friday morning, in one of the country’s deadliest school shootings in recent years.

At least six people are dead, three of them students and three teachers, police spokesperson Lieutenant General Trairong Phiwphan said, adding that more than a dozen other people were also wounded.

Terrified students huddled together under their desks, sobbing as gunshots rang out nearby, video filmed inside a classroom and verified by CNN showed. Further video showed students running out of the school as a staff member helped them evacuate.

The shooting took place at Debsirin Nonthaburi School, a well-known secondary school of about 3,000 students, located on a busy highway in the Bang Kruai district of Nonthaburi province, north of Bangkok.

While early reports had quoted police saying the suspected gunman had died, Trairong has confirmed he remains in critical condition and doctors are providing emergency treatment.

At least 15 people are wounded, with two in a critical condition, Trairong said.

Thailand’s Central Investigation Bureau told CNN the “situation is now under control.”

A photo provided to CNN by a police official in Bangkok shows a single handgun and multiple rounds of ammunition scattered on the floor inside the school.

The firearm is believed to have belonged to a family member of the suspected gunman, but police have not yet determined how he gained access to the weapon, police spokesperson Trairong said.

He had been living with adult relatives rather than with his parents, he added.

Emergency workers rushed to the scene with stretchers. In one Reuters photo, one person is seen lying down on a stretcher outside an ambulance, while another is attended to by a medic.

Gun ownership in Thailand is relatively high compared with other countries in Southeast Asia.

There were more than 10.3 million civilian-owned firearms in Thailand, or around 15 guns for every 100 people, according to 2017 data from the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (SAS).

Thailand ranks as the Southeast Asian country with the second-highest number of gun homicides after the Philippines, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s 2019 Global Burden of Disease database.

In February, a teacher died and a student was wounded in southern Thailand’s Hat Yai district after a gunman opened fire at a school. In 2022, 36 people were killed, 24 of them children, in a massacre at a childcare center in the northeast, believed to be the country’s deadliest incident of its kind.

Source: CNN

--Agencies