ISLAMABAD: A gunman injured three people in a school shooting in southern Thailand on Wednesday, while a separate attack by a student at a college in southern Russia left one security guard dead and three others wounded, officials said.

"Police shot the suspect in the Hat Yai shooting," Thailand's Central Investigation Bureau said in a statement, after earlier saying he had been killed.

A woman and a 14-year-old girl were hospitalised with gunshot wounds and both underwent surgery, the ministry of public health said in a statement.

A second child suffered an ankle injury after they "fell from a height", it added.

The suspect entered the Phatong Prathan Khiriwat School in "an agitated state while carrying a gun", the Songkhla provincial government said in a statement.

Shortly after he entered, "about two to three gunshots were heard", the provincial government said.

The national police said the suspect was arrested.

A school administrator told AFP she was at the scene and too scared to speak before hanging up.

Thailand has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the region, with around 10 million firearms estimated to be in circulation -- one for every seven inhabitants.

Past promises of tightening gun laws have not prevented repeated tragedies.

In 2023, a 14-year-old boy, who was undergoing treatment for mental illness according to investigators, shot dead two people at a packed mall in the capital, Bangkok.

The previous year, an ex-policeman armed with a gun and knife stormed into a nursery in the country's north and murdered 24 children and 12 adults, one of Thailand's deadliest massacres.

A former army officer gunned down 29 people in a rampage at a mall in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima in 2020.

In a separate incident in Russia, Russian police said a student opened fire at a technical college in the city of Anapa, on the Black Sea and near Moscow-annexed Crimea, with investigators saying the attacker had been detained.

The local governor, Veniamin Kondratyev, said one person was killed.

"A security guard, who was the first to take a blow. He reacted quickly and called law enforcement agencies," Kondratyev, the governor of the Krasnodar region where Anapa is located, said.

"He prevented the attacker from entering the technical college," he added.

Kondratyev said two people suffered "moderate injuries" and that the number of victims was still being clarified.

"This is a horrific crime," he said.

Unverified footage on social media showed a youth wearing black and holding his hands up near the entrance of the college, which was decorated in images of the Soviet victory against the Nazis.

This month, Russia reported a knife attack in a Urals university, a knife attack in a Siberian school by a schoolgirl and an air-gun attack by a schoolboy in central Russia.

The Anapa attack came a day after the head of Russia's powerful FSB security service, Alexander Bortnikov, called on regional leaders to do more to prevent school violence after the spike in attacks.

Russian state media reported Bortnikov told a session of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee that "preventative measures among young people" were not enough, warning that "the enemy" was looking to exploit youths on social media.

School and university shootings used to be rare in Russia, but have become more common, with a spike in attacks in recent months.

Russian schools have become especially targeted by the Kremlin's state propaganda on its Ukraine military campaign.

Articles tagged with "school shooting"

Separate school shootings hit Thailand and Russia, several victims reported