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Families of Thai shooting victims wait for answers, bodies

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AP Nakhon Ratchasima
Last Updated : Feb 10 2020 | 8:08 AM IST

Sirirat Nualraksa blinked back tears as the ambulances delivered gurneys bearing cloth-shrouded bodies to the morgue of a public hospital after a vengeful Thai soldier killed 29 people and wounded dozens of others in a shopping mall rampage.

Sirirat lost her sister, brother-in-law and young nephew in the attack. She was among dozens of victims' relatives sitting in plastic chairs and on concrete benches outside the morgue on Sunday, waiting to fill out paperwork to lay claim to their loved ones and receive compensation from the Thai government's criminal victims' fund.

On Facebook, she had talked with her sister, 33-year-old Papatchaya Nualraksa, as she hid with her husband and their 2-year-old in a supermarket storage room.

Sirirat advised her sister to nurse her son so he wouldn't make noise and risk revealing the family to the gunman, whose rounds of automatic fire echoed around the seven-story mall.

In a Facebook call, Papatchaya told her sister that she was scared.

"Gunshots could be heard endlessly and loudly. But there was no sign" of a rescue, Sirirat said. Still, "both of us thought that she would be able to get out."

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First Published: Feb 10 2020 | 8:08 AM IST

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