three dead in shooting at Bangkok shopping center

Three people were killed and four others were injured on Tuesday, October 3, in a shooting that broke out in a major shopping center in Bangkok, according to Thai emergency services. The attacker was arrested, confirmed Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin. “The police evacuate the scene. The situation has returned to calm”declared the leader on television.

Video surveillance images posted on social networks show a young man apprehended by two police officers with weapons in hand, in a furniture store. Sounds of explosions created scenes of panic late in the afternoon at Siam Paragon, a tourist and commercial hotspot in the Thai capital. Hundreds of people evacuated the building, according to an AFP journalist on site.

Armed attacks are recurrent in the kingdom, which has one of the highest gun ownership rates in Asia. This incident comes almost a year to the day after the largest mass killing in modern Thai history, in the province of Nong Bua Lam Phu. A former police officer killed 36 people with a gun and knife, the majority of them children under the age of five.