Relatives wailed and some collapsed as they grieved on Friday over the small coffins carrying children slain by a fired police offer who stormed a day care center in rural Thailand during naptime, reports UNB.
The entire country reeled in the wake of Thursday's grisly knife and gun attack in a small town nestled among rice paddies in one of the nation's poorest regions. At least 24 of the 36 people killed in the assault, Thailand’s deadliest mass killing, were children.
“I cried until I had no more tears coming out of my eyes. They are running through my heart," said Seksan Sriraj, 28, who lost his pregnant wife due to give birth this month in the attack at the Young Children’s Development Center in Uthai Sawan.
“My wife and my child have gone to a peaceful place. I am alive and will have to live. If I can’t go on, my wife and my child will be worried about me, and they won’t be reborn in the next life," he said.
A stream of people, including Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, other government representatives and relatives themselves, have left flowers at the day care center. By afternoon, bouquets of white roses and carnations lined the wall outside, along with five tiny juice boxes, bags of corn chips and a stuffed animal. A faded Thai flag flew at half-staff above the single-story building.
Later, relatives received the bodies at the local Buddhist temple. As the small, white coffins were opened, some screamed, while others fainted. Paramedics revived them with smelling salts.
Bd-pratidin English/Tanvir Raihan
