Young boy killed in Thailand violence
A nine-year-old boy was shot dead as he got off a bus in Bangkok, and unknowingly stepped into the crossfire of rival high school gangs, police in Thailand said today.
The fatal shooting was the latest incident in a long-running problem in Thailand of violent fighting that occurs mainly between rival vocational schools and often spills into public places such as buses and shopping centres frequented by students.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Prasit Taprasitjit said the boy was going to school alone on a bus on the eastern outskirts of the capital and had reached his stop when a gang of about 20 students from the Bangkapi School of Technology fired three shots at the bus.
The child was hit by two bullets and died an hour later in hospital.
