Gunman shoots dead 22 children in Thailand Transcript

Speaker 1: (00:00) Well, we're going to go back now to Thailand and get an update on the shooting that's happened at a daycare center in the country. Our Asia correspondent, Cordelia Lynch is on the line now. Cordelia, what more can you tell us? Cordelia Lynch: (00:13) Well, incredibly distressing news coming out of Thailand today. 34 people, police say, have been killed, including 22 children in a mass shooting at a preschool in a northeastern province of Thailand. The attacker, a former policeman we're told, also killed his wife and child before shooting himself dead. Cordelia Lynch: (00:37) Local officials say about 30 children were at the center when the gunman entered the building at about 1230. It was during the children's nap time, a particularly grim detail to this story that is unfolding as we speak. Cordelia Lynch: (00:52) A district official has said that the attacker first shop four or five members of staff, including a teacher who was eight months pregnant. Describes people thinking initially that it was fireworks that were going off, and there are some very distressing videos and images on social media showing sheets covering what appears to be the bodies of children lying in pools of blood at this center. Cordelia Lynch: (01:19) It is in the town of Uthai Sawan in the northeastern province of Nong Bua Lamphu. And local police have provided quite a lot of information and context in the hours that have followed this attack. They say he was armed with a shotgun, a pistol, and a knife, and that he fled the scene in a vehicle. Local media have said he fled and then returned to his own home, and that is where he killed his own wife and child. We're also told by the superintendent of the local police station that the government was discharged from the police force last year. Cordelia Lynch: (01:58) Now, gun ownership in Thailand is high compared with other countries in the region, but official figures don't include illegal weapons that have crossed a very porous border there. Mass shootings in Thailand, relatively rare. The last significant one of note in 2020. But this is something that the nation will be reeling from, and as I say, incredibly distressing details.