At least 2 killed 15 injured in Shooting at Debsirin Nonthaburi school Near Bangkok

At least two people have been killed and roughly a dozen others wounded after a gunman opened fire at a secondary school in Nonthaburi province, just north of Bangkok, on Friday morning.

The attack unfolded around 10 a.m. local time at Debsirin Nonthaburi School in the Bang Kruai district, according to volunteers from the Poh Teck Tung Foundation who received reports of shots fired inside the well-known secondary school. Preliminary reports indicate two people were killed, one of them believed to be a teacher, with at least 10 others injured. Some local outlets have put the number of wounded higher, at up to 15.

Police have named the suspected shooter as a student. He is reportedly in the eighth grade and is believed to have barricaded himself on the third floor of one of the school’s buildings as officers moved to secure the area. Officers from Plai Bang Police Station and the Nonthaburi Provincial Police Special Operations Unit have been working to bring the situation under control, and parents and members of the public have been urged to stay away from the area so emergency crews can carry out their work.

The exact toll remains unconfirmed. Pasakorn Chaitawiwong, head of the Plai Bang subdistrict police in Nonthaburi, said the final number of deaths was not yet known as the situation continued to develop Friday.

Gun violence remains a persistent problem in Thailand, which has one of the highest rates of civilian firearm ownership in Southeast Asia an estimated 10 million guns are in circulation, or roughly one for every seven people in the country. That’s despite repeated government promises to tighten firearms laws.

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This is the second school shooting in Thailand this year. In February, a shooting at a school in Hat Yai, in southern Thailand’s Songkhla province, left the school’s director dead and two others injured; police arrested the 18-year-old suspect after he briefly held students and staff hostage.

The country’s worst mass shooting in recent memory came in October 2022, when a former police officer killed 36 people — 24 of them children in a gun and knife rampage at a childcare center in Nong Bua Lamphu province before turning the weapon on himself.