UTHAI SAWAN, Thailand –
Hundreds of mourners and families of the victims gathered Tuesday night to watch the flames burn from rows of makeshift ovens at cremation ceremonies for the young children and others who died in the week’s mass killings. spent at a daycare center in rural northeast Thailand.
Families said their last goodbyes at a Buddhist temple a short distance from the Young Children’s Development Center in the city of Uthai Sawan, where a former police officer, who was fired from his job earlier this year for using drugs, stormed in on Thursday. past and shot. and stabbed children and their caregivers.
Police Sergeant Panya Kamrap ended up killing 36 people, 24 of them children, in this small farming community before taking his own life. It was the largest mass murder perpetrated by an individual in Thai history.
The ceremonies for most of the victims were held together to avoid families having to wait long hours for successive cremations to be completed, said Phra Kru Adisal Kijjanuwat, the abbot of the Rat Samakee temple.
Gasoline fueled the flames of outdoor charcoal-fired pyres as the sky darkened over the temple.
By Tuesday morning, many of the young victims’ bodies had been outfitted as doctors, soldiers or astronauts, whatever they wanted to be when they grew up, before being cremated at night.
Volunteer rescuer Attarith Muangmangkang said his organization took care of the costumes and helped families change the clothes of the victims on Tuesday.
“The more we talked (to families), we realized that these children also dreamed of becoming doctors, soldiers, astronauts or police officers,” Attarith said. “We provide them with those uniforms.”
Mourners also placed children’s toys, candles and incense sticks in front of the portraits of the victims in the temples.
Petchrung Sriphirom, 73, was one of many local residents who traveled to the temple on Tuesday to offer condolences to the families and make a small donation to help with funeral costs, which is a common Thai custom.
“I just want to help our friends and share our thoughts with them,” Petchrung said. “We are not talking about money or anything, but about sharing our thoughts and feelings as a human being.”
The body of the perpetrator was cremated on Saturday in a neighboring province after temples in Uthai Sawan refused to host his funeral, Thai media reported.
Mass shootings are rare but not unheard of in Thailand, which has one of the highest rates of civilian gun ownership in Asia, with 15.1 guns per 100 people compared to just 0.3 in Singapore and 0 .25 in Japan. That’s still much lower than the US rate of 120.5 per 100 people, according to a 2017 survey by Australia’s nonprofit GunPolicy.org.
Thailand’s worst previous mass murder involved a disgruntled soldier who opened fire in and around a shopping mall in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima in 2020, killing 29 people and holding off security forces for some 16 hours. before they finally killed him.