A devastating mass shooting at a Thai high school just north of Bangkok has left four people dead and 15 others injured, according to Thailand’s Deputy Interior Minister. The attack, which unfolded Friday at Debsirin Nonthaburi School in the Bang Kruai district of Nonthaburi province, claimed the lives of two students and two teachers, Deputy Minister Polapee Suwunchwee confirmed to local public broadcaster Thai PBS. All 15 injured people were students who sustained harm not from direct gunfire, but from accidents during their panicked escape from the campus, Polapee added.
Law enforcement and local media have identified the shooter as a teenage student currently enrolled at the targeted school. Multiple sources confirm the suspect is also dead, though conflicting accounts have emerged about the circumstances of his death: some reports state that responding police officers shot and killed the teen, while others indicate he died by suicide.
Polapee noted that the attacker used a handgun in the assault, and the Interior Ministry has launched a full investigation into how the underage student obtained the illegal weapon. Photographs published by local Thai media outlets show the suspect dressed in the school’s purple uniform carrying a black cross-body bag, with multiple spent bullet casings scattered across the ground near the scene of the attack.
An AFP journalist stationed near the school reported that road traffic in the immediate area came to a near-standstill in the hours after the shooting, as panicked parents flooded the neighborhood to pick up their children following the lockdown and alert.
The tragedy has reignited long-simmering debate over gun control in Thailand, which boasts one of the highest civilian gun ownership rates in Southeast Asia. Current estimates put the total number of unregistered and registered firearms in circulation at roughly 10 million — meaning one firearm for every seven Thai citizens. Despite repeated past political pledges to tighten national gun regulations, high-profile mass shootings have continued to plague the country with alarming frequency.
Just this year in February, a teenage shooter opened fire at a school in southern Thailand, killing the principal and wounding two students before being arrested by police. That attacker, who had recently been discharged from psychiatric hospitalization, stabbed an on-duty police officer and stole his 9mm service pistol before carrying out the attack. The deadliest incident in Thailand’s modern history of mass violence took place in 2022, when a former police officer entered a nursery in the country’s north and murdered 36 people, including 24 children, before killing himself.
Speaking to reporters at Government House in Bangkok shortly after the shooting, Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul expressed shock and sorrow over the attack. “It’s such a terrible incident. It should never have happened. How could this happen in our country?” the prime minister told reporters.