Thailand shooting: Teenager, 14, arrested after shooting spree kills two in Bangkok shopping mall

The victims in the Thailand shooting attack were from China and Myanmar

A 14-year-old boy has been arrested following a shooting in a luxury shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand, which killed two people.

Thai police said six people were injured in the incident in the Siam Paragon mall, several of whom are in a serious condition.

One of the two victims is Chinese and the other is believed to be from Myanmar.

This handout from the Central Investigation Bureau of the Royal Thai Police shows the arrest of a 14-year-old boy suspect of a shooting at Siam Paragon shopping centre in Bangkok.

Video uploaded to social media and broadcast on television showed a long-haired teenage boy in the custody of police.

While the shooter is reported to be 14 years old, police chief Torsak Sukvimol confirmed only that he is a minor and appeared to be suffering from mental illness.

Police spokesman Archayon Kraithong said shortly after the shooting, on Tuesday evening local time, the situation was under control at the complex, which sells high-end clothing and luxury cars. The shopping mall includes a cinema, an aquarium and the five-star Siam Kempinski hotel. It is popular with both locals and visitors to the city.

Gautam Vora, 45, an Indian national who works in finance in Bangkok, was at the shopping centre with his wife and child. He said it was "quite scary", even though he was initially unsure whether he had heard gunshots or "somebody playing a hoax with some firecrackers".

"Everybody was screaming and running," he said. "There was a lot of chaos and that was almost like a stampede."

Chinese tourist Liu Shiying said she saw people running and saying someone had opened fire. She said she heard gunshots and an alarm ringing, and then the lights in the shopping centre went out.

"We're temporarily hiding – who dares to go out?" she said while taking cover. She was later able to leave.

Multiple videos uploaded to social media showed people running out of the building and a person dressed in a baseball cap, dark shirt and camouflage pants holding a handgun.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said one of the dead was a Chinese tourist, aged around 30.

"I would like to express my deepest condolences to the family of the deceased following the shooting inside Siam Paragon," Mr Srettha, who took office in August, said in an earlier statement. "I would like to give my moral support to the families of all who died and were injured."

Thailand has a relatively high level of gun ownership and there has been a surge of gun violence in recent years, although mass shootings are rare.

The shooting comes just short of a year after a gun and knife attack at a rural daycare centre in a north-eastern province that killed 36 people, most of them young children.

Meanwhile, in 2020, a disgruntled soldier opened fire in and around a shopping centre in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, killing 29 people and holding off security forces for some 16 hours before eventually being killed by them.

Data on website GunPolicy shows around one in ten people in the country owns a gun, although this does not take into account illegal gun ownership.

Gun deaths in Thailand are at 3.91 per 100,000, compared to 0.24 in the UK and 10.95 in the US, according to World Population Review.