Many in a Thai city mourning the 29 killed in a mass shooting are questioning the apparent security lapses that allowed a soldier to steal weapons he used in the assault. It's still unclear how the gunman snatched the weapons and vehicle he used to flee.
A truck with soldiers and sniffer dogs enter Thai army's 22nd Ammunition Battalion in Surathampitak Military Camp, where a Thai soldier turned mass shooter stole a cache of weapons in Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, Monday, Feb. 10, 2020. It's still unclear how a Thai soldier managed to steal heavy weapons from an army base which he then used to kill 29 people and hold off security forces for almost 16 hours while he was holed up in a popular shopping mall.
The gunman’s actions show “that the level of control over this base’s armory was woefully insufficient in terms of manpower and access restriction,” said Michael Picard, research director of GunPolicy.org. The most disastrous weapons theft took place in Thailand’s deep south in 2004, when Muslim separatist militants raided an army base, killed four soldiers and made off with about 400 assault rifles. Some of the weapons are believed to have been sent to Muslim militants in Indonesia’s Aceh province, but most stayed with the Thai rebels, who have waged an insurgency that has claimed about 7,000 lives.
Some people have criticized the many hours it took for Thai security forces to end the siege at the mall, among them Khunpol Khanpakwan, who was outside a public hospital morgue Monday waiting to recover his daughter’s body. “How could the authorities let a culprit run around killing people around the city? Just only one person,” Khanpakwan said, adding that “they are equipped with weapons but couldn’t do anything to him.”
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