Thai Nursery Massacre Families Pray to Free Children’s Souls

By AFP 10 October 2022

NA KLANG, Thailand—Mourning households knelt Sunday exterior a Thai nursery the place their kids have been murdered, performing a Buddhist ceremony to place their souls at relaxation.

Sacked police officer Panya Khamrab killed 36 folks — 24 of them kids — on Thursday in a gun and knife rampage in northeastern Nong Bua Lam Phu province, in one of many kingdom’s worst-ever mass killings.

Saffron-robed monks led prayers for the useless Sunday on a second day of formality mourning at a temple near the nursery in Na Klang district, a quiet farming space torn aside by Thursday’s bloodshed.

Earlier, households wept as they knelt exterior the nursery in a ceremony to assist launch their kids’s souls. Some clutched their kids’s portraits, beloved toys and favorite meals, which they positioned exterior the compound as choices.

Round a low fence surrounding the single-storey, pink-roofed nursery the place just some days in the past children performed fortunately, piles of flowers constructed up.

The candy aroma of incense scented the air because the assembled crowd, together with many well-wishers from the close-knit area people, bowed their heads in prayer, a low crackle of thunder echoing within the distance.

Officers solemnly carried kids’s treasured possessions out of the nursery to return to households — favorite blankets and much-loved toys, every fastidiously positioned in name-tagged baggage.

“After I see the tears of the households, I simply really feel very unhappy… I can’t describe it. I really feel actually unhealthy (about) what’s occurred in my hometown,” Rutt, 57, informed AFP after becoming a member of her fellow villagers in supporting the bereaved.

The carnage started when the attacker compelled his manner in through the kids’s nap time at about 12:30 pm on Thursday, opening hearth together with his personal legally owned 9mm pistol and slashing with a knife.

Afterwards, the 34-year-old went residence to homicide his spouse and son earlier than taking his personal life, police stated, ending the rampage at about 3:00 pm.

Many of the victims died from knife accidents or gunfire, and family informed AFP of the horrific wounds inflicted on their little ones.

King’s help

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha, who was attributable to be a part of prayers Sunday night, has ordered a swift investigation and police have stated they anticipate to interview about 180 witnesses within the coming days.

Panya was sacked as a police sergeant earlier this 12 months for drug abuse and locals say they suspected he was a methamphetamine addict, though preliminary exams discovered no medicine in his system.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn met survivors and family at a hospital late on Friday in a uncommon public interplay for the monarch, who’s formally thought to be semi-divine.

The king stated he “shared the grief” of the households and pledged to help them.

The assault surprised Thailand and induced horror world wide. On Saturday, the Thai group in Melbourne, Australia, held a candlelit vigil to mourn the victims.