‘They can hardly walk, hardly breathe’: Parents of child victims of Thailand’s pre-school attack face the unfaceable
No one wants to outlive their child. But in Nong Bua Lamphu, an entire community is living with that very burden.
The victims, killed at the hands of an angry ex-policeman who rampaged through their pre-school, included 24 children – some as young as two years old – as well as adults, authorities said.
At Wat Rat Samakkhi everywhere you look, there’s pain.
As we arrive, we can hear screams from inside.
This is where the families have come to receive the bodies of their little ones.
It is incredibly raw – there are people in so much distress they can hardly walk, hardly breathe.
At the door to the side of the temple, a father rocks as he weeps. This is where they’re meant to fill out paperwork – a formal recognition of an unbearable loss. But everyone is struggling.
Rasamee Srinamburi has just lost her son.
She is trying to stand while sobbing uncontrollably – her family propping her up. Her son, four-year-old Prapankorn was killed.
Rassami Srinamburi
She shares utterly gut-wrenching details of his death. Her son was stabbed in the face.
Tragically, Rasamee saw the photos of his lifeless body. She tells me “he was lively, caring and always told her how much he loved her”.
Rescue workers stand next to coffins at Udon Thani hospital
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Distressingly, it turns out she also knew the attacker – they had gone to school together, she says, and he performed well. But that same boy became a man who entered the place where Rasamee’s son should have felt safe, a haven, and made it a hell.
At the nursery, what appears to be a bullet hole in the window hints at the horror inside.
It’s the small details that hit you here, like the half-empty milk bottles by the gates.
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Thai mother: ‘I knew son’s killer’
Families have been gathering all day. I see one woman, heavily pregnant. She looks absolutely exhausted. Her name is Marisa – and she tells us she hasn’t slept all night.
As she carries one child, she is mourning another – her four-year-old son was among those killed.
Just a few yards away, I meet Seksan Sriraj who is sitting staring ahead with utter bewilderment in his eyes. He tells me he has lost his wife.
Seksan Sriraj
She was a teacher and she, too, was pregnant. That day, he says, she was in charge of the room where the children slept.
As they grieve, just a ten-minute drive away, we find the home of the attacker, a 34-year-old who police say was fired from the force and was facing a drug charge.
Childhood frozen in time
Outside his home, only the burnt shell of his truck remains. Neighbours tell me he set it alight before entering his home and killing his own wife and stepson. The toys outside signify another trace of a childhood now frozen in time.
Across the road, I meet Prantumporn. She says her 63-year-old father, Udorn was also killed.
He had tried, she said, to warn others. He’d asked the attacker if he was OK. But he just replied, “I’m going to shoot you.”
What this community has seen, up close, is the kind of trauma that changes the fabric of a society.
A famine has been declared in Gaza City and the surrounding neighbourhoods.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a globally recognised system for classifying the severity of food insecurity and malnutrition – has confirmed just four famines since it was established in 2004.
These were in Somalia in 2011, and in Sudan in 2017, 2020, and 2024.
The confirmation of famine in Gaza City is the IPC’s first outside of Africa.
“After 22 months of relentless conflict, over half a million people in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic conditions characterised by starvation, destitution and death,” the report said, adding that more than a million other people face a severe level of food insecurity.
Israel Gaza map
Over the next month conditions are also expected to worsen, with the famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis, the report said.
Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions while acute malnutrition is projected to continue getting worse rapidly.
Over the next year, the report said at least 132,000 children will suffer from acute malnutrition – double the organisation’s estimates from May 2024.
Israel says no famine in Gaza
Volker Turk, the UN Human Rights chief, said the famine is the direct result of actions taken by the Israeli government.
“It is a war crime to use starvation as method of warfare, and the resulting deaths may also amount to the war crime of wilful killing,” he said.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, has rejected the findings.
Israel’s foreign ministry said there is no famine in Gaza: “Over 100,000 trucks of aid have entered Gaza since the start of the war, and in recent weeks a massive influx of aid has flooded the Strip with staple foods and caused a sharp decline in food prices, which have plummeted in the markets.”
Another UN chief made a desperate plea to Israel’s prime minister to declare a ceasefire in the wake of the famine announcement.
Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said famine could have been prevented in the strip if there hadn’t been a “systematic obstruction” of aid deliveries.
“My ask, my plea, my demand to Prime Minister Netanyahu and anyone who can reach him. Enough. Ceasefire. Open the crossings, north and south, all of them,” he said.
The IPC had previously warned famine was imminent in parts of Gaza, but had stopped short of a formal declaration.
Palestinians struggle to get aid at a community kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: AP
The latest report on Gaza from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there were almost 13,000 new admissions of children for acute malnutrition recorded in July.
The latest numbers from the Gaza health ministry are 251 dead as a result of famine and malnutrition, including 108 children.
But Israel has previously accused Hamas of inflating these figures, saying that most of the children who died had pre-existing health conditions.
The Ukrainian suspected of coordinating attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines had served in Ukraine’s Secret Service and in the Ukrainian Army’s special forces, Sky News understand.
Serhii K., 49, was arrested in northern Italy on Thursday following the issuance of a European arrest warrant by German prosecutors.
It is not known whether he was still serving at the time of the pipeline attack in 2022 and Ukraine’s government has always denied any involvement in the explosions.
According to sources close to the case, the suspect has been found in a three-star bungalow hotel named La Pescaccia in San Clemente, in the province of Rimini.
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Man arrested over Nord Stream attacks
When military officers from Italy’s Carabinieri investigative and operational units raided his bedroom, he didn’t try to resist the arrest.
The hotel’s employees have been questioned, but no further evidence or any weapons were found, the sources added.
Serhii arrived on Italy’s Adriatic coast earlier this week, and the purpose of his trip was a holiday. He was found with his two children and his wife.
At least one of the four people within his family had a travel ticket issued in Poland. He crossed the Italian border with his car with a Ukrainian license plate last Tuesday.
He was travelling with his passport, and he used his real identity to check into the hotel, triggering an emergency alert on a police server, we have been told.
A satellite image shows gas from the Nord Stream pipeline bubbling up in the Baltic Sea. File pic: Roscosmos via Reuters
After the arrest, he was taken to the Rimini police station before being moved to a prison in Bologna, the regional capital, on Friday.
Deputy Bologna Prosecutor Licia Scagliarini has granted the German judicial authorities’ requests for Serhii’s surrender, but Sky News understands the man told the appeal court that he doesn’t consent to being handed over to Germany.
He also denied the charges and said he was in Ukraine during the Nord Stream sabotage. He added that he is currently in Italy for family reasons.
While leaving the court, he was seen making a typical Ukrainian nationalist ‘trident’ gesture to the reporters.
The next hearing is scheduled for 3 September, when the Bologna appeal court is set to decide whether Serhii will be extradited to Germany or not. He will remain in jail until then.
In Germany, he will face charges of collusion to cause an explosion, anti-constitutional sabotage and the destruction of structures.
German prosecutors believe he was part of a group of people who planted devices on the pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022.
Serhii and his accomplices are believed to have set off from Rostock on Germany’s north-eastern coast in a sailing yacht to carry out the attack.
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The explosions severely damaged three pipelines transporting gas from Russia to Europe. It represented a significant escalation in the Ukraine conflict and worsening of the continent’s energy supply crisis.
According to a US intelligence report leaked in 2023, a pro-Ukraine group was behind the attack. Yet, no group has ever claimed responsibility.
Spare pipes for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. File pic: Reuters/Fabian Bimmer
Sky News understands Genoa’s Prosecutor’s Office in northern Italy has requested their colleagues in Bologna to share the information related to Serhii.
Anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating another alleged sabotage linked to the Russian shadow fleet oil tanker Seajewel, which sank off the port of Savona last February.
On Thursday, they asked an investigative police unit to figure out whether there is a link between that episode and the Nord Stream attacks.
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