Sawt Falasteen - Thai mall shooter's family 'accept responsibility', apologise

Police have charged the teenager, who has not been named, with murder over Tuesday's attack at the Siam Paragon mall, which left five other people wounded.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin vowed to take "preventive measures" after the shooting -- the third high-profile deadly gun attack to hit the kingdom in the last four years.

"We offer our deepest apologies to the victims, the families of the deceased and the injured, from the recent shooting incident that occurred as the result of our son's actions at the Siam Paragon department store," said the statement, distributed in Thai, English and Chinese to reporters by the Thai foreign ministry.

"We are deeply saddened and shocked by this incident and accept responsibility as fully as we can."

The statement, signed by "the father of the juvenile offender", pledged the family's full cooperation with the police investigation.

The boy, a student at a $4,000-a-term private school just metres from Siam Paragon, has been undergoing psychiatric tests to see if he would be fit to stand trial.

Investigators said Tuesday he had been undergoing treatment for mental illness but had stopped taking his medication and reported hearing voices telling him to shoot people.

The attack was carried out with a blank-firing pistol modified to shoot live rounds. Police have arrested three people suspected of selling a gun and ammunition to the shooter.

The attack at one of Bangkok's biggest, most upmarket malls will come as a fresh blow to Thailand's efforts to rebuild its vital tourism industry after the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Friday a senior officer from Thailand's tourist police issued a video message aiming to reassure visitors that authorities were doing their utmost to ensure the safety of visitors to the kingdom.

- Gun epidemic -

Thailand has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the region, with around 10 million firearms estimated to be in circulation -- one for every seven inhabitants.

Past promises of tightening gun laws have not prevented repeated tragedies.

Friday marks the one-year anniversary of a massacre at a nursery in the country's north, when an ex-policeman armed with a knife and a gun murdered 24 children and 12 adults.

In 2020, a former army officer gunned down 29 people in a rampage at a mall in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima.

Travel restrictions during the pandemic saw visitor numbers to Thailand dry up.

China -- which sent around 10 million visitors a year to the kingdom before the pandemic -- is a crucial market, but numbers are not returning as fast as Thai officials would wish.

This is partly because of fears in China about whether Thailand is safe, and the fact that one of the mall shooting victims was Chinese is unlikely to improve this situation.

Y.Zaher--SF-PST