Sawt Falasteen - Four dead, 15 injured in Thailand school shooting: deputy minister

Two students and two teachers were killed in the assault at the high school in Nonthaburi province, deputy interior minister Polapee Suwunchwee told local broadcaster Thai PBS.

The injured students were not hurt by gunfire but as they were trying to flee, he said.

The shooter was identified as a teenage student of the school and also reported dead, according to local media reports citing authorities.

Some reports said police officers had shot and killed the suspect, while others said he had died by suicide.

"It's such a terrible incident. It should never have happened. How could this happen in our country?" Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters at Bangkok's Government House.

Polapee said the suspect used a handgun and the interior ministry was investigating how the student obtained it.

Photos published by local media show the suspect wearing a purple school uniform and carrying a black cross-body bag, with several bullet casings visible on the ground.

Traffic near the Debsirin Nonthaburi School in Nonthaburi was nearly at a standstill, an AFP journalist saw, with local media reporting that parents were picking up their children following the incident.

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 shootings.

Thai police shot and arrested a teenage shooter who opened fire at a school in the south of the country in February, leaving the school principal dead and two students injured.

The teen had used a police officer's weapon in the shooting.

A local police chief said at the time that the suspect was hospitalised for psychiatric treatment in December and had been discharged.

The teen stabbed a police officer with a knife and stole his weapon -- a 9mm pistol -- just before the incident, and then used it to carry out the attack.

In 2022, an ex-policeman armed with a gun and a knife stormed into a nursery in the country's north and murdered 24 children and 12 adults, one of Thailand's deadliest massacres.

H.Darwish--SF-PST