Gunman ‘with grudge’ kills five at Bangkok market

Policemen from a special operations unit at a crime scene at a market in Bangkok, Thailand (Nava Sangthong/AP)

A gunman shot and killed five people at a popular fresh food market in the Thai capital before killing himself, police have said, attributing the shooting to a personal grudge.

The victims included four security guards at the Or Tor Kor market in northern Bangkok, according to a police statement.

It said a vendor there was also killed, and that two others were wounded.

Mr Noi is a person who loves and is very protective of his car, and is also a violent person

The market is next to the sprawling Chatuchak weekend market, which is popular with Thai and foreign tourists.

A statement by Bangkok’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner issued several hours after the shooting said the gunman’s wife told them that he had held a grudge against the security guards related to his car being scratched in 2019 or 2020.

The wife has a food stall at the market, the statement said.

“Mr Noi is a person who loves and is very protective of his car, and is also a violent person,” said the statement, identifying the suspect only by a nickname.

It said the gunman walked away after the shooting and shot himself with a handgun on a bench.

He had been wearing a black T-shirt, military-pattern shorts, a baseball cap and a backpack.

The statement stressed that the incident involved a personal conflict and was not linked to the border fighting with neighbouring Cambodia, as had been rumoured on social media.

A policeman of a special operations unit at a crime scene at a market in Bangkok, Thailand (Nava Sangthong/AP)

Gun violence is not unusual in Thailand, which has fairly restrictive laws but also a high level of gun ownership.

The last mass shooting in Bangkok was in October 2023 when a teenage boy shot more than half a dozen people at the Paragon shopping centre with a modified blank pistol in the city’s main shopping district, killing three people.

One of the country’s worst mass killings occurred in October 2022 in the north-eastern province of Nong Bua Lamphua, when a police sergeant who had lost his job used guns and knives to kill 36 people, including two dozen toddlers at a day care centre.

In February 2020, a disgruntled Thai army soldier shot and killed 29 people, most at a shopping centre in the north-eastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima, before he was killed by police after an 18-hour stand-off.