We are closing this blog now. You can read more about the Thailand school shooting in our story here.
In this video report, students at the school describe what they heard during the terrifying attack this morning:
The Debsirin secondary school has said that in the wake of the deadly shooting all classes will be suspended between 10 and 14 August, with staff being instructed to work from home during that time.
Bangkok’s Thairath is reporting that Thailand’s health minister, Phatthana Phromphat, has issued a statement regarding three serious injuries after the school shooting.
He has visited the Phra Nang Klao hospital, which, he said, had admitted three patients in a critical condition. Two of them have received surgery and are in a stable condition. The third, a 12-year-old girl, remains in a coma, with concerns about her injury as she has a bullet wound to the head.
What we know so far …
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Thai police say that a 14-year-old boy killed two of his grandparents at their home using a handgun belonging to his grandfather.
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The suspect then went to the Debsirin School, where he was a pupil, and opened fire.
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Amid conflicting reported casualty figures, police have said five teachers were shot at the school, before the suspect shot himself.
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At least 30 people were injured in the shooting, with at least nine of them believed to be severely wounded.
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Thailand’s prime minister Anutin Charnvirakul said the suspect was “under stress” and appeared to have planned the assault.
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Charnvirakul has vowed to propose a new law to restrict the carrying of firearms by the public, in a country which has one of the highest rates of private gun ownership in the world. The country has witnessed several mass shootings in recent years.
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The Higher Education minister has donated blood at a hospital near to the location of the school, and urged members of the public to do the same.
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Police officers and authorities have been pictured collecting evidence at the house where the suspect lived, including removing computer equipment from the dwelling.
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The school where the shooting took place has announced it will be closed next week.
Thailand’s higher education minister, Yodchanan Wongsawat, has been pictured by local news sources donating blood at the Phra Nang Klao hospital in Thailand’s Nonthaburi province. He appealed to members of the public to also donate blood in order to assist with treating those caught up in the school shooting.
Updated
Some images dropping on the news wires show police and authorities removing evidence including computer equipment from the house where a teenager is suspected of killing his grandparents before carrying out the school shooting in Nonthaburi province which has left several people dead.
To Prompong Namwong, an English teacher at the school, it was a normal morning. He was in the middle of a lesson when suddenly a panicked student from another class flung open the door, trying to find somewhere to hide.
Confused, Namwong went out into the corridor. That’s when he heard other teachers shouting: “mass shooting.”
He told his students to hide underneath the tables. “The killer, the student, he was running in front of my room. I thought I was going to die for sure.”
Namwong estimates he waited with his students, panicked, in lockdown for about 20 to 30 minutes. When he heard a knock on the door he thought the end had come but it turned out to be the police rescuing them.
He would find out in the school’s group chat that his friends had not been so lucky. “They’re all good teachers. I don’t know what to say.”
“I never thought to myself that it would happen – really happen – in my school. I thought it would never happen.”
“I don’t know what to do. My life has to go on, but right now … it’s a very great shock.”
Thailand's PM vows new gun law after deadly school shooting
Thailand’s prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, has vowed to propose a law to restrict the carrying of firearms by the public.
“The new law will only allow government officials on duty to carry guns,” he told reporters on Friday, but did not provide any specifics, including whether the legislation will tighten gun ownership requirements.
Thailand is known to have the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in south-east Asia, and the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey in 2017 placed the country 13th globally for small gun possession, as my colleague notes in this story.
Mass-shootings have also regularly occurred in Thailand, including incidents at schools, a major Bangkok mall and a 2022 attack in the country’s northeast that killed 36 people including 22 children.
The country’s licensing regime still lacks mental health screening for people applying to possess a gun and does not require periodic reassessments for licence holders, according to Piyaporn Tunneekul, an associate professor at Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat university in Thailand.
“We only look at things like: Do you have money? Do you have a necessary reason to protect your property? Do you want it for self-defence? But in other countries, authorities say those are not good reasons,” she told the Reuters news agency.
Updated
Evening is falling, but all around the schoolchildren’s shoes - black mary janes and white trainers – are still strewn around lunch tables and the stairs outside classrooms.
It’s school rules in Thailand that children take off their shoes before entering the building – a cultural norm across Asia in buildings such as temples, homes and certain businesses.
But when children were able to leave their classrooms after the lockdown “the kids left without their shoes,” English teacher Prompong Namwong told the Guardian.
Namwong estimates the lockdown lasted somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes and then the children were then gathered in an assembly behind the school and their parents collected them.
Teen suspect killed at least seven people and injured more than 30, officials say
Thai officials have revised down the death toll from the school shooting. Earlier officials said a total of eight people were killed (the suspect’s two grandparents at their home, and then three teachers and three students at the school).
But now the national police said the 14-year-old suspect killed seven people overall: first his two grandparents, using his grandfather’s handgun, at their home, then he was said to have killed five school staff at the Debsirin secondary school in Nonthaburi province.
The suspect also died, with a police official telling the AFP news agency that he had killed himself after the attack.
Thailand’s prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, has confirmed that more than 30 people were injured, with around nine in critical condition.
Pichanan Thiengtham, an art teacher at the school, was in the teachers’ lounge getting ready for her next class when she heard the shots at about 10am in the morning.
Thiengtham told the Guardian she couldn’t believe it was a gun at first – “there were so many shots and they lasted for a long time without stopping,” she said.
It was only when she saw one of the students injured she realised what was happening on the school grounds. “I took the injured student to get first aid and then transferred them to the hospital (in the school’s) building one.”
Then she hid, fearing for her own safety. She knew the teachers and students – “everyone” – who were not so lucky, and fears for those who are still in a critical condition.
Thiengtham spoke with the Guardian as she was still on the school grounds late Friday afternoon, helping transfer children’s backpacks that had been strewn on the grounds in the rush to escape to a locked room.
Suspect was 'under stress' and appeared to have planned the attack, Thailand's PM says
Thailand’s prime minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, has been speaking to reporters at the scene. He said the suspect was “under stress” and appeared to have planned the assault.
“Police interrogated his close friend who said the suspect had been under stress” related to his schooling, Anutin told journalists gathered outside the secondary school in Nonthaburi province.
“His actions also suggested that he had clearly planned (the shooting).” The prime minister added that he would discuss gun control with the country’s police chief.
He also confirmed reports that the suspected shooter was 14 years old and killed himself following the attack.
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Natasha May is reporting from Nonthaburi on the outskirts of Thailand’s capital, Bangkok
From its outskirts, it appears to be a normal day in Nonthaburi but the closer you get to the school, the greater the police presence becomes with large silver vans and officers in uniform everywhere.
The children have been evacuated from the school premises and in their place on the bright red, yellow and green covered multipurpose sports area in front of the classrooms are a throng of media and officials.
The prime minister, minister of education, deputy minister of the interior, minister of public health and the chief of the police department are about to address the media regarding the national tragedy.
Red striped police tape blocks off part of the play area and officials’ cars are parked where the children would have been playing this morning.
Suspected shooter had a pulse when emergency workers found him, rescue worker says
Emergency worker Kiatikhun Verapongpradith, 47, has been interviewed by the Reuters news agency. He described arriving to the scene in the Nonthaburi province with his team as the shooting at the school was still ongoing.
They found a male teacher lying dead on an upper floor of the school, and a female teacher with wounds in her chest and arm in another room.
Verapongpradith said he was called to treat the suspected shooter after hearing a final shot. “We rushed up and found that the perpetrator had shot himself in the right side of the head and collapsed. When we got up there, we checked his pulse, he still had one, so we started CPR.” He reportedly died on the way to the hospital.
During the attack, the suspect fired at least 26 bullets with a gun belonging to his grandfather, and was found with 34 additional ammunition rounds.
At least 22 people injured in school shooting, health ministry says
Natasha May is reporting from Nonthaburi on the outskirts of Thailand’s capital, Bangkok
There are 22 people injured as of 1.30pm local time being treated at six local hospitals, according to a statement released by Thailand’s ministry for health.
Nine are in a critical condition (the most severe red category), four require urgent care (yellow category) and another nine have non-severe injuries (green category).
Seven mental health crisis assessment and treatment teams have also been deployed to provide psychological support to the affected community.
Dr Somruek Juengsaman, the permanent secretary for public health, said mental health care is being triaged according to proximity to the event, with the highest priority group being the injured and the relatives of the deceased.
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Key event
Journalists from the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency have been speaking to people outside the Debsirin School on the outskirts of Bangkok following the deadly shooting.
Purin Khumchoo, 17, said he was among the students who had nearly been shot. “He was my junior, but I had a feeling that he was a troubled kid. My group of friends who knew him said he was interested in the FBI and guns, and that he was bullied by many other students,” Purin told AFP.
“When I saw him aiming the gun at me, I thought he looked very professional, as if he had been trained for a long time.”
One 18-year-old student told the Reuters news agency that he initially thought there were firecrackers going off or someone banging 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.”
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There have been conflicting casualty numbers given by officials this morning.
Thailand’s deputy interior minister Polapee Suwunchwee told reporters at the scene that five teachers were killed in the school shooting.
We are still awaiting further information on this as in a statement issued earlier the national police said three teachers and three students were killed.
It has been confirmed by authorities that the suspected shooter killed his grandparents at home before going to the Debsirin School to carry out the rest of the shootings.
The suspected shooter was a 14-year-old student at the school and killed himself following the attack, according to reports.
Updated
Here are some of the latest images being sent to us from the scene following the deadly school shooting in the Bang Kruai district of Thailand’s Nonthaburi province:
School shooting serves as 'wake-up call to Thai society', opposition leader says
The leader of the People’s Party, Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut, has said that while the motive for the school shooting remains unclear it serves “as another wake-up call to Thai society”.
“We must collectively review and implement a systematic approach to gun control measures, coupled with enhanced security measures in educational institutions to prevent similar incidents from recurring in the future,” the opposition leader wrote in a post on Facebook.
Ruengpanyawut expressed his “deepest condolences” to those who were killed in today’s school shooting and to those who were injured.
Thailand has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the region, with about 10 million firearms estimated to be in circulation – one for every seven inhabitants.
Past promises of gun law reforms have not prevented deadly shootings in Thailand. In February, a 17-year-old stole a gun from police and opened fire at a public high school in southern Thailand, killing one person.
In 2022, an ex-policeman armed with a gun and a knife stormed into a nursery in the country’s north and killed 24 children and 12 adults, one of Thailand’s deadliest massacres.
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Thailand’s health minister, Pattana Promphat, said in an update that 22 people were injured in the school shooting, with nine reported to be in critical condition.
Some were injured from causes such as falls, and it wasn’t clear how many were shot.
The shooter was a student who remained inside the school after reports of the attack first emerged, Arsit Sampantharat, the permanent secretary for the interior ministry, told news station PPTV.
A witness told reporters that students hid inside a classroom while they heard gunshots from another building before police officers knocked on the door and cleared a way for them to leave the building.
In the 2025 academic year, the Debsirin School had an enrolment of about 3,100 students and 147 teachers, according to district authorities.
The school is one of a network of Debsirin secondary schools, which were founded by the Thai royal family. Alumni include prime ministers, scholars and writers.
Updated
Suspect in Thailand school shooting killed several people, police say
The suspect in a school shooting in the Bang Kruai district of Nonthaburi province in Thailand killed eight people in total on Friday, police said.
First he shot his grandparents dead, using his grandfather’s handgun, then went to his school, the Debsirin Nonthaburi School on Bangkok’s outskirts, and killed three teachers and three students, according to national police.
Lt. Col. Dechrapee Kongdee, the Nonthaburi provincial police commander, confirmed that the suspected gunman had taken his own life.
The suspected gunman, who was a student, fired 26 rounds and another 34 rounds of ammunition were found at the scene, police said in a statement.
The suspect was in the ninth grade (typically about 14 years old), Kongdee told the BBC.
It is the second school shooting in Thailand this year after a teacher died and a student was injured in the south of the country in February.
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