Thai villages hold funerals for massacre victims

Families said goodbye to their children with toy trucks, portraits, and flowers at Buddhist funerals on Tuesday in Thailand. Twenty-four children were among 36 people killed in an attack on a preschool and other sites in Uthai Sawan last week. Official mourning started in the town Saturday. Hundreds of mourners gathered at three temples.

What did the ceremony look like? Many parents and relatives picked out their child’s favorite toy or a costume of what they wanted to be when they grew up to cremate with the bodies. The priests asked relatives to remove anything not to be cremated, then placed paper flowers around the coffins and poured gasoline on them. The families were ushered to mats nearby while other mourners were separated from them by a mesh barrier. Then the pyres were lit on fire while the families prayed for their loved ones.

Dig deeper: Listen to Bonnie Pritchett’s report on The World and Everything in It podcast about pastors comforting a mourning community after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.