At least seven people were killed on Friday when a student opened fire at a school in Thailand before turning the gun on himself, a national police official said.
Students streamed out of Debsirin Nonthaburi School on the northwestern outskirts of Bangkok as wounded victims were taken to ambulances. Teachers were also seen hugging each other and crying.
Emergency workers circulated photos showing one person lying on a stretcher outside an ambulance while another was being treated by a medic.
An 18-year-old student told Reuters that he initially thought the sounds were firecrackers or someone hitting 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.’
Lt Col Trirong Phophan, a spokesman for the National Police, said the suspected shooter was among the seven people killed. Fifteen people were injured.
Second school shooting this year
Education Minister Prasert Jantararuangtong told Reuters that both teachers and students were among those reported dead. Police identified the perpetrator as a student.
The incident is the second school shooting in Thailand this year. In February, a teacher was killed and a student injured in a shooting at a school in southern Thailand.
Emergency worker Kiatikhun Verapongpradith, 47, said his team arrived while the shooting was still taking place and treated students with injuries to their backs, chests and arms.
They also found a male teacher dead on an upper floor of the school. In another room, they found a female teacher with gunshot wounds to her chest and arm.
‘We gave CPR for about 30 minutes and rushed her to the hospital as we could not get her heart rate up, but we tried our best,’ he said.
The school had around 3,100 students and 147 teachers during the 2025 academic year, according to district authorities.
Deputy Education Minister Akkharanan Kannakittinan said he was coordinating efforts to provide assistance.
Thailand’s history of deadly shootings
Gun ownership and gun violence are not uncommon in Thailand, which has experienced a series of deadly shootings over the past six years, including attacks in which children were among the victims.
Thailand’s worst mass killing by a single perpetrator in recent history occurred in 2022, when a former policeman carried out a three-hour gun and knife attack in the northeast that killed 36 people, including 22 children who were stabbed while sleeping at a daycare centre.
In July 2025, a gunman killed five people, including security guards and a vendor, at a Bangkok market before taking his own life.
In February this year, a teacher was killed in the southern city of Hat Yai when a shooter opened fire at the school where she worked.
In 2020, a soldier killed 29 people in a shooting rampage in Nakhon Ratchasima.
In 2023, a 14-year-old used a modified handgun to kill two people and injure five others at a luxury shopping centre in Bangkok.
