Received

A former policeman has killed 34 people, including 23 children, during a knife and gun rampage at a daycare centre in Thailand, later shooting dead his wife and child at their home before turning his weapon on himself, police say.

In one of the world's worst child death tolls in a massacre by a single killer in recent history, most of the children who died in Uthai Sawan, a town 500km northeast of Bangkok, were stabbed to death, police said.

The age range of children at the daycare centre was from two to five years, a local official told Reuters.

They identified the attacker as a former member of the force who was dismissed from his post last year over drug allegations and he was facing trial on a drugs charge.

The man had been in court earlier on Thursday and had then gone to the daycare centre to collect his child, police spokesman Paisal Luesomboon told broadcaster ThaiPBS.

When he did not find his child there, he began the killing spree, Paisal said.

"He started shooting, slashing, killing children at the Utai Sawan daycare centre," Paisal said.

"It's a scene that nobody wants to see. From the first step when I went in, it felt harrowing," Piyalak Kingkaew, an experienced emergency worker heading the first responder team, told Reuters.

"We've been through it before but this incident is most harrowing because they are little kids."

A large van that police said contained bodies of 22 people, mostly children, was seen departing from a police station headed towards the city of Udon Thani, 80km away, where autopsies would be performed.

A Reuters photographer also saw late on Thursday the body of the shooter, Panya Khamrapm, being moved in a bodybag from a van to a police station in the province.

Photographs taken at the daycare centre by the rescue team and shared with Reuters showed the tiny bodies of those killed laid out on blankets.

Abandoned juice boxes were scattered across the floor.

"He was heading towards me and I begged him for mercy, I didn't know what to do," one distraught woman told ThaiPBS, fighting back tears.

"He didn't say anything, he shot at the door while the kids were sleeping," another woman said, becoming distraught.

Police said the attacker's weapon was a 9 mm pistol and it had been obtained legally.

Thailand's police chief said the perpetrator had tried to break into the premises and had mostly used a knife in the killings.

"Then he got out and started killing anyone he met along the way with a gun or the knife until he got home. We surrounded his house and then found that he committed suicide in his home," Damrongsak Kittiprapas told reporters.

He said a few children had survived, without giving details.

About 30 children were at the facility - a pink, one-storey building surrounded by a lawn and small palm trees - when the attacker arrived, fewer than usual, as heavy rain had kept many people away, said district official Jidapa Boonsom, who was working in a nearby office at the time.

"The shooter came in around lunch time and shot four or five officials at the childcare centre first," Jidapa told Reuters.

The attacker forced his way into a locked room where the children were sleeping, Jidapa said.

A teacher who was eight months pregnant was also among those stabbed to death, she said.

The massacre is among the worst involving children killed by one person.

In Norway, Anders Brevik killed 69 people, mostly teenagers, at a summer camp in 2011 while the child death toll in other cases include 16 at Dunblane in Scotland in 1996 and 19 at a school in Uvalde in the US this year.

In the Beslan school hostage crisis in Russia in 2004, 186 children were killed by a group of hostage takers.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha, in a statement on Facebook, called Thursday's shooting a "shocking incident".

The government said it would provide financial aid to the victims' families to help cover funeral expenses and medical treatment.

Lifeline 13 11 14

beyondblue 1300 22 4636

© RAW 2022

A former police officer facing a drug charge has burst into a day care centre in Thailand, killing dozens of preschoolers and teachers and then shooting more people as he fled.

At least 36 people were slain on Thursday in the deadliest rampage in the nation's history.

The assailant, who was fired earlier this year, took his own life after killing his wife and child at home.

Photos taken by first responders showed the school's floor littered with the tiny bodies of children still on their blankets, where they had been taking an afternoon nap. The images showed slashes to their faces and gunshots to their heads and pools of blood.

A teacher told public broadcaster Thai PBS that the assailant got out of a car and immediately shot a man eating lunch outside, then fired more shots. When the attacker paused to reload, the teacher had an opportunity to run inside.

"I ran to the back, the children were asleep," said the young woman, who did not give her name, choking back her words.

"The children were two or three years old."

The attack took place in the rural town of Uthai Sawan in Thailand's northeastern province of Nongbua Lamphu, one of the country's poorest regions.

At least 10 people were wounded, including six critically, police spokesman Archayon Kraithong said.

A video taken by a first responder arriving at the scene showed rescuers rushing into the single-storey building past a shattered glass front door, with drops of blood visible on the ground in the entryway.

Police identified the suspect as 34-year-old former police officer Panya Kamrap. Police Major-General Paisal Luesomboon told PPTV in an interview that he was fired from the force earlier this year because of the drug charge.

In a Facebook posting, Thai police chief Gen. Dumrongsak Kittiprapas said the man, who had been a sergeant, was due in court on Friday for a hearing in the case involving methamphetamine, and speculated that he may have chosen the day care centre because it was close to his home.

Earlier, Dumrongsak told reporters that the main weapon used was a 9mm pistol that the man had purchased himself. Paisal said he also had a shotgun and a knife.

Thailand Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who planned to travel to the scene on Friday, told reporters that initial reports were that the former officer was having personal problems.

"This shouldn't happen," he said.

"I feel deep sadness toward the victims and their relatives."

Police have not given a full breakdown of the death toll, but they have said at least 22 children and two adults were killed at the day care. At least two more children were killed elsewhere.

Some family members of those killed in the attack were still at the scene of the rampage late into the evening. Mental health workers sat with them, trying to bring comfort, according to Thai TBS television.

Firearm-related deaths in Thailand are much lower than in countries such as the United States and Brazil, but higher than in Japan and Singapore, which have strict gun-control laws. The rate of firearms related deaths in 2019 was about 4 per 100,000, compared with about 11 per 100,000 in the US and nearly 23 per 100,000 in Brazil.

Mass shootings are rare but not unheard of in Thailand, which has one of the highest civilian gun ownership rates in Asia, with 15.1 weapons per 100 population compared to only 0.3 in Singapore and 0.25 in Japan. That's still far lower than the US rate of 120.5 per 100 people, according to a 2017 survey by Australia's GunPolicy.org nonprofit organisation.

© RAW 2022

Brittany Higgins will be quizzed about secret recordings she took of conversations with a senior Liberal minister and her chief of staff.

The former Liberal Party staffer was called as the first witness in the criminal trial of Bruce Lehrmann, who has been accused of raping her.

He has pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent.

On Thursday the court heard Ms Higgins secretly recorded a phone conversation with her former boss and then-employment minister Michaelia Cash in 2021, days after she resigned from her staffer position.

Senator Cash had called to offer Ms Higgins alternatives to resigning from her office.

Ms Higgins said the phone call was strange because the senator was pretending as though she didn't know about her alleged rape even though the pair had spoken about it before.

"It was ridiculous. It was the weirdest phone call I have ever had in my life," she said.

Ms Higgins also recorded a conversation with Senator Cash's former chief of staff Daniel Try without his knowledge.

Defence lawyer Steven Whybrow put to Ms Higgins that she had sent the recordings to multiple people, including journalists, to begin backgrounding for the story.

But Ms Higgins said it was for her legal protection and so that she could corroborate her story.

"I was trying to give them (the recordings) to as many people as possible to have them just so that they existed," she said.

"It's my word against a cabinet minister's and the disparity between those two powers is ridiculous."

Mr Whybrow also put to Ms Higgins other inconsistencies in the story the court had heard during the previous two days.

He questioned what Ms Higgins did with the white cocktail dress she was wearing on the night of the alleged assault.

He referred to her earlier story that she had put the unwashed dress under her bed for a period of six months before she laundered and wore it to a Liberal Party event.

He then showed the jury a photo of Ms Higgins wearing the dress to an event - a birthday dinner for Liberal senator Linda Reynolds - in May 2019, around two months after the alleged assault.

Mr Whybrow put to Ms Higgins that she had not given true and correct evidence.

"I made a mistake, I wasn't trying to do anything, I was just wrong," Ms Higgins told the court.

Mr Whybrow also put to Ms Higgins that she had made her rape allegation public by participating in two media interviews because she intended to damage the Liberal Party.

Ms Higgins said she wanted to reform a cultural problem with the way women were being treated in Parliament House.

"I loved my party, I loved the Liberal Party," she said.

Ms Higgins' former bosses Senator Cash and Senator Linda Reynolds as well as former Liberal MP Steven Ciobo have been listed as witnesses and could be called to give evidence during the trial.

The trial is expected to last for between four and six weeks.

© AAP 2022