A shooting broke out on Tuesday in a major shopping center in Bangkok, leaving one dead, according to the provisional assessment of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, who announced the arrest of the assailant. “The attacker was arrested. In fact, he surrendered. The police evacuate the scene. The situation has returned to calm,” Srettha Thavisin said on television. The arrested suspect is a fourteen-year-old teenager, said the Thai police investigation bureau.
Hundreds of people left the building, located in the center of the Thai capital. Videos on social media show scenes of panic. Siam Paragon is one of Bangkok’s main shopping centers, popular with locals and tourists from all over the world.
Ten million guns in the country
This incident comes almost a year to the day after the largest mass killing in the modern history of the kingdom, in the province of Nong Bua Lam Phu (north-east). A former police officer killed 36 people, the majority of them children under the age of five, during a murderous journey with guns and knives lasting more than three hours.
Armed attacks continue to claim victims almost every week in the kingdom. In 2017, the country had around ten million firearms, almost half of which (4 million) were not registered with the authorities, according to the Small Arms Survey, a Swiss research program. In 2020, a killing in a shopping center in Nakhon Ratchasima left 29 people dead.