Gunman who entered Thai school detained, 2 wounded

BANGKOK - A gunman who fired shots at a school in Hat Yai district in southern Thailand on Wednesday (Feb 11) has been detained and all the people who were held hostage have been freed, a police official told Reuters.

An 18-year-old man entered the Patongprathankiriwat School in Songkhla Province's Hat Yai earlier on Wednesday with a gun, the provincial administration said on social media.

"The perpetrator has been captured," Deputy Superintendent Wichian Soboon told Reuters, adding that two people - a student and a teacher - were wounded in the incident.

In a photograph shared by police, the suspect, barefoot and dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, is seen held down on the ground by armed officers.

In a video shared by a witness, which could not immediately be verified by Reuters, armed police officers storm the three-storied school as the sound of gunfire rings out.

In another, also not immediately verifiable, students run down stairs at the school as police, some wearing helmets and black bullet-proof vests and carrying rifles, shouted: "Go home kids, it's safe."

Gun violence and ownership are not uncommon in Thailand, where a former police officer killed 36 people, including 22 children, in a gun-and-knife attack at a nursery in the country's east in 2022.

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