Three injured in Thailand school shooting, gunman arrested
- Last updated: February 11, 2026 | 17:43 ..
Thai police shot and arrested a gunman who opened fire on Wednesday at a school in southern Thailand, injuring a woman and two children, police and other authorities said.
"Police shot the suspect in the Hat Yai shooting," Thailand's Central Investigation Bureau said in a statement, after earlier saying he had been killed.
A woman and a 14-year-old girl were hospitalised with gunshot wounds and both underwent surgery, the ministry of public health said in a statement.
A second child suffered an ankle injury after they "fell from a height," it added.
The suspect entered the Phatong Prathan Khiriwat School in "an agitated state while carrying a gun", the Songkhla provincial government said in a statement.
Shortly after he entered, "about two to three gunshots were heard", the provincial government said.
The national police said the suspect was arrested.
A school administrator told AFP she was at the scene and too scared to speak before hanging up.
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.
In 2023, a 14-year-old boy, who was undergoing treatment for mental illness according to investigators, shot dead two people at a packed mall in the capital, Bangkok.
The previous year, an ex-policeman armed with a gun and knife stormed into a nursery in the country's north and murdered 24 children and 12 adults, one of Thailand's deadliest massacres.
A former army officer gunned down 29 people in a rampage at a mall in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima in 2020.
Agence France-Presse