Thai teen kills 7 in home, school rampage

BANG KRUAI, Aug 7: A teenage Thai student killed at least five people and himself at a school outside Bangkok on Friday after fatally shooting his grandparents, police said, in the Southeast Asian nation's worst mass killing in nearly four years.

Students streamed out of the Debsirin Nonthaburi School, on the capital's northwestern outskirts, as the wounded were loaded on to ambulances and teachers hugged each other and cried. In photos circulated by emergency workers, one person is seen lying down on a stretcher outside an ambulance, while another is attended to by a medic.

Police said 23 people were wounded in the incident, the latest in a succession of mass shootings in recent years in Thailand, which has by far the largest number of guns in civilian possession in Southeast Asia, and among the most per capita in Asia, according to a 2017 estimate by the Small Arms Survey.

One 18-year-old student told Reuters he initially thought there were firecrackers going off or someone banging an object.

"I didn't think it was a gun at first," he said. "There were many shots: bang, bang, bang. Then it went quiet. Then it started again."

It is the second school shooting in Thailand this year after a teacher died and a student was injured in the south of the country in February.�" REUTERS