The King of Thailand, Maha Vajiralongkorn, said he shared the “pain” of the families of the victims after the massacre in a daycare center which left 36 dead, during a rare visit to his subjects.
The 70-year-old monarch went to a hospital in Nong Bua Lamphu on Friday evening where the wounded from one of the kingdom’s worst attacks are being treated.
The bereaved families knelt on the hospital floor, as is Thai custom in the presence of the king.
“I came here to support you. I am extremely sad about what happened. I share your pain, your grief,” he said in a video posted online Saturday morning.
Rare interaction with his subjects
It was a very rare direct interaction with his subjects for Rama X, whose figure is sacred in the country.
“There has never been an incident like this here before. The king’s reason for visiting us is to boost the morale of the Thai people,” said Yonnapha Sriphanthabutr, 58, among the 50 or so people who came to wait for him.
Buddhist funeral rites for the dead were due to begin later on Saturday, marking the start of three days of mourning for those killed.
The royal visit came after a day of mourning at the small, yellow-walled nativity scene, located on the edge of a village in the rural district of Na Klang, some 500km north of Bangkok.
Heartbroken parents laid white roses, one by one, on the steps of the nursery where the lives of their young children were brutally cut short on Thursday afternoon by Sergeant Panya Khamrab, recently fired from the police.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha joined mourners on Friday, laying white flowers outside the entrance gate of the nursery.
Three day mourning
The bereaved parents had gathered earlier in front of this well-kept-looking house that does not suggest the drama of the day before.
A shocked mother clutches the blanket of her missing child and holds her half-filled milk bottle in her hand.
Some children were only two years old, like little Kamram whose 19-year-old mother Panita is inconsolable. “It’s incomprehensible,” she breathes, her 11-month-old daughter in her arms.
“I still can’t accept what happened. Assailant, what is your heart made of? “, wrote on Facebook Seksan Srirach, the husband of a teacher pregnant with their child and killed at the crèche.
A former policeman armed with a legally purchased 9mm pistol and a long knife killed 36 people, including 24 children (21 boys and 3 girls), on Thursday in a murderous journey lasting about three hours that began in a nursery from Na Klang district in the middle of the day.
The 34-year-old man then took to the road and knocked down passers-by, until he got to his home, “not far” from the daycare, according to the police. He killed his wife and their little boy there, then killed himself.
Most of the victims died from a combination of stabbing and gunshot wounds, according to police investigators.
Prime Minister Prayut ordered a swift investigation into the massacre, and it emerged that Panya had been fired from the police for drug abuse.
Several people in this rural province where everyone knows each other told AFP that he was known to be addicted to methamphetamine.
With Thanaporn Promyamyai in Bangkok