CNN —

Lecturers and youngsters have been killed after a scholar opened fireplace at a secondary faculty in Thailand on Friday morning, in one of many nation’s deadliest faculty shootings lately.

At the very least six persons are lifeless, three of them college students and three lecturers, police spokesperson Lt. Gen. Trairong Phiwphan mentioned, including that greater than a dozen different individuals have been additionally wounded.

Terrified college students huddled collectively underneath their desks, sobbing as gunshots rang out close by, video filmed inside a classroom and verified by CNN confirmed. Additional video confirmed college students working out of the varsity as a workers member helped them evacuate.

The taking pictures passed off at Debsirin Nonthaburi College, a widely known secondary faculty of about 3,000 college students, situated on a busy freeway within the Bang Kruai district of Nonthaburi province, north of Bangkok.

Whereas early reviews had quoted police saying the suspected gunman had died, Trairong has confirmed he stays in important situation and docs are offering emergency remedy.

At the very least 15 persons are wounded, with two in a important situation, Trairong mentioned.

A crowd gathers exterior a college the place deaths and accidents have been reported after a taking pictures in Thailand’s Nonthaburi province, Friday, Aug. 7, 2026.

Thailand’s Central Investigation Bureau advised CNN the “scenario is now underneath management.”

A photograph offered to CNN by a police official in Bangkok exhibits a single handgun and a number of rounds of ammunition scattered on the ground inside the varsity.

The firearm is believed to have belonged to a member of the family of the suspected gunman, however police haven’t but decided how he gained entry to the weapon, police spokesperson Trairong mentioned.

He had been dwelling with grownup relations somewhat than together with his mother and father, he added.

Emergency employees rushed to the scene with stretchers. In a single Reuters photograph, one particular person is seen mendacity down on a stretcher exterior an ambulance, whereas one other is attended to by a medic.

Gun possession in Thailand is comparatively excessive in contrast with different international locations in Southeast Asia.

There have been greater than 10.3 million civilian-owned firearms in Thailand, or round 15 weapons for each 100 individuals, based on 2017 knowledge from the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey.

Thailand ranks because the Southeast Asian nation with the second-highest variety of gun homicides after the Philippines, based on the Institute for Well being Metrics and Analysis on the College of Washington’s 2019 World Burden of Illness database.

In February, a trainer died and a scholar was wounded in southern Thailand’s Hat Yai district after a gunman opened fireplace at a college. In 2022, 36 individuals have been killed, 24 of them youngsters, in a bloodbath at a childcare heart within the northeast, believed to be the nation’s deadliest incident of its sort.

This can be a growing story and might be up to date.