Thai police officers arresting a suspected gunman after storming Patongprathankhiriwat School in Hat Yai, Thailand. (EPA Images pic)
BANGKOK: A gunman who fired shots at a school in Hat Yai district in southern Thailand on Wednesday has been detained and all the people who were held hostage have been freed, a police official told Reuters.
An 18-year-old man entered the Patongprathankiriwat School in Songkhla Province’s Hat Yai earlier on Wednesday with a gun, the provincial administration said on social media.
“The perpetrator has been captured,” deputy superintendent Wichian Soboon told Reuters, adding that two people – a student and a teacher – were wounded in the incident.
In a photograph shared by police, the suspect, barefoot and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, is seen held down on the ground by armed officers.
In a video shared by a witness, which could not immediately be verified by Reuters, armed police officers storm the three-storey school as the sound of gunfire rings out.
In another, also not immediately verifiable, students run downstairs at the school as police, some wearing helmets and black bulletproof vests and carrying rifles, shout, “Go home kids, it’s safe.”
Gun violence and ownership are not uncommon in Thailand, where a former police officer killed 36 people, including 22 children, in a gun-and-knife attack at a nursery in the country’s east in 2022.
