Girl, 3, survives Thailand nursery massacre unscathed after sleeping through attack
A three-year-old girl miraculously survived the Thailand nursery massacre after sleeping through the ordeal covered in a blanket.
Paweenuch Supolwong emerged unscathed after former police officer Panya Kamrap killed 36 people, including 24 pre-school children as they were taking an afternoon nap, during the attack on Thursday.
She is believed to be the only person to escape uninjured after violence unfolded at a day care facility in the rural town of Uthai Sawan, in Thailand‘s deadliest mass killing.
Another boy, Sumaee, was stabbed and shot twice but survived after skilled neurosurgeons removed two bullets from his head.
Paweenuch was in a deep slumber facing a wall when the attacker burst into the building and did not see or hear the attack.
She survived because Kamrap, 34, believed she was already dead, her mother Anonpai Srithong said.
Rescue workers carried the three-year-old out of the centre with her eyes covered to avoid her witnessing the devastating scene of carnage.
Her best friend, who was sleeping next to her, was among the victims of the tragedy.
Mrs Srithong described her relief after learning her daughter was alive.
Paweenuch Supolwong, held by her mother Anonpai Srithong, waves goodbye to her deceased friends’ coffins inside a temple. Pic: AP
Pic: AP
At the time, she and her husband were at work in a Bangkok electronics factory almost 500 miles away from Uthai Sawan.
The couple moved to the Thai capital for work, leaving their three-year-old in their care of her grandmother, but made a panic-stricken journey back to the town after the attack.
“Breathing was difficult, I can’t describe it, but when I found out my child survived I was relieved,” Mrs Srithong told the Associated Press.
“But I also wanted to know if she had any injuries, if there was any collateral damage.”
Mrs Srithong said her cousin was also killed in the massacre.
“There’s both good luck hidden in bad luck – I’m lucky that my child is okay but I lost my cousin,” she said.
“For some people, some lost an only child who was their hope.”
Mrs Srithong and her daughter attended a Buddhist temple service to pay their respects to the victims.
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The scene of the Thailand massacre
Mourners have flocked to Paweenuch, tying dozens of white, yellow and red “soul strings” around her wrists in the hope of helping her spirit survive the atrocity.
They believe a person loses part of their soul when they experience such a tragedy.
“It is to bring the spirit back into her body,” her mother said.
“It’s like the spirit had left the body and it is being called back.”
Paweenuch’s relatives tie ‘soul strings’ around her wrist to help restore her spirit Pic: AP
Nanticha Panchom, the teacher who runs the day care centre, was in the kitchen when she heard a shot fired outside.
“I never thought he would go inside,” she said.
“I can’t even imagine what this lost generation will mean to the community.”
Read more:
Eyewitness: Parents of the Thailand pre-school attack face the unfaceable
Thailand prays for the children who died in the day care massacre
Police identified the attacker as Kamrap, who was fired over a drug charge.
He continued his killing spree after leaving the nursery, before shooting his wife and child at home then turning the gun on himself, police said.
Panya Khamrap carried out the massacre but killing himself. Pic: Shutterstock
Thailand’s government is giving compensation to families to help them pay for funeral expenses.
A team of trauma experts has been dispatched from Bangkok to work alongside local mental health professionals to help the victims.
The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken “deadly seriously,” David Lammy has warned.
Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary.
We travelled to Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole.
It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change.
Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken “deadly seriously” due to climate change and “the threats we’re seeing from Russia”.
We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard’s coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past.
David Lammy and Norway’s Foreign Minister Barth Eide view the melting Blomstrandbreen glacier. Pic: PA
The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre.
“We do see Russia’s shadow fleet using these waters,” Mr Lammy said. “We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time.”
In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders.
The foreign secretary visiting SvalSat, a satellite ground station which monitors climate in Svalbard. Pic: PA
Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit.
“Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security,” he said.
But it’s not just Vladimir Putin they’re worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Russian leader too.
Norwegian observers are concerned about the Russian leader – and Trump being ‘too soft’ on him. Pic: AP
Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: “If he’s too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans.”
Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance – including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia.
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In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary.
There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security.
“Let’s be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security.”
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This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.
Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.
World
‘What did they do to be burned and bombed?’: Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment
A British charity has written to the prime minister and foreign secretary, urging them to allow seriously ill children from Gaza into the UK to receive life-saving medical treatment.
Warning: This article contains images readers may find distressing
The co-founder of Project Pure Hope told Sky News it was way past the time for words.
“Now, we need action,” Omar Dinn said.
He’s identified two children inside Gaza who urgently need help and is appealing to the UK government to issue visas as a matter of urgency.
Israel-Gaza latest: Netanyahu reportedly accepts US ceasefire plan
Britain has taken only two patients from Gaza for medical treatment in 20 months of Israeli bombardment.
Children are among the bulk of the casualties in Gaza
“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe that’s unfolding in Gaza are children,” he continued. “And children are the most vulnerable.
“They have nothing to do with the politics, and we really just need to see them for what they are.
“They are children, just like my children, just like everybody’s children in this country – and we have the ability to help them.”
Sky News has been sent video blogs from British surgeons working in Gaza right now which show the conditions and difficulties they’re working under.
They prepare for potential immediate evacuation whilst facing long lists, mainly of children, needing life-saving emergency treatment day after day.
Dr Victoria Rose is a British surgeon working in southern Gaza’s last remaining hospital
Dr Victoria Rose told us: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.
“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.
“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”
One of her patients is three-year-old Hatem, who was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family apartment.
Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
His pregnant mother and father were both killed, leaving him an orphan. He has 35 percent burns on his small body.
“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Dr Rose says. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”
Hatem’s grandfather barely leaves his hospital bedside. Hatem Senior told us: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries? To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”
Hatem Senior
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The second child identified by the charity is Karam, who, aged one, is trying to survive in a tent in deeply unhygienic surroundings with a protruding intestine.
He’s suffering from a birth defect called Hirschsprung disease, which could be easily operated on with the right skills and equipment – unavailable to him in Gaza right now.
Read more:
Gaza doctor’s nine children killed
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Karam, aged one, has a birth defect that could be easily fixed with surgery
Karam’s mother Manal told our Gaza camera crew: “No matter how much I describe how much my son is suffering, I wouldn’t be able to describe it enough. I swear I am constantly crying.”
Children are among the bulk of casualties – some 16,000 have been killed, according to the latest figures from local health officials – and make up the majority of those being operated on, according to the British surgical team on the ground.
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