BANGKOK (AP) — A gunman shot and killed five people at a popular fresh food market in the Thai capital on Monday before killing himself, police said, attributing the shooting to a personal grudge.
The victims included four security guards at the Or Tor Kor market in northern Bangkok, according to a police statement. It said a vendor there was also killed, and that two others were wounded.
The market is next to the sprawling Chatuchak weekend market, which is popular with Thai and foreign tourists.
A statement by Bangkok's Metropolitan Police Commissioner issued several hours after the shooting said the gunman's wife told them that he had held a grudge against the security guards related to his car being scratched in 2019 or 2020. The wife has a food stall at the market, the statement said.
“Mr. Noi is a person who loves and is very protective of his car, and is also a violent person,” said the statement, identifying the suspect only by a nickname.
It said the shooter walked away after the shooting and shot himself with a handgun on a bench. He had been wearing a black T-shirt, military-pattern shorts, a baseball cap and a backpack.
The statement stressed that the incident involved a personal conflict and was not linked it to the border fighting with neighboring Cambodia, as had been rumored on social media.
Gun violence is not unusual in Thailand, which has fairly restrictive laws but also a high level of gun ownership.
The last mass shooting in Bangkok was in October 2023 when a teenage boy shot more than half a dozen people at the Paragon shopping mall with modified blank pistol in the city’s main shopping district, killing three people.
One of the country’s worst mass killings occurred in October 2022 in the northeastern province of Nong Bua Lamphua, when a police sergeant who had lost his job used guns and knives to kill 36 people, including two dozen toddlers at a day care center.
In February 2020, a disgruntled Thai army soldier shot and killed 29 people, most at a shopping mall in the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima, before he was killed by police after an 18-hour standoff.
Policemen of a special operations unit at a crime scene at a market in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, July 28, 2025 where police says six people are dead after a shooting incident. (AP Photo/Nava Sangthong)
A policeman of a special operations unit at a crime scene at a market in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, July 28, 2025 where police says six people are dead after a shooting incident. (AP Photo/Nava Sangthong)
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — The United States airstrikes that targeted Islamic State militants in northwestern Nigeria on Thursday marked a major escalation in an offensive that Nigeria's overstretched military has struggled with for years.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on social media that the “powerful and deadly” strikes were carried out against Islamic State militants “targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians.” Residents and security analysts have said Nigeria’s security crisis affects both Christians, predominant in the south, and Muslims, who are the majority in the north.
Nigeria, which is battling multiple armed groups, said the U.S. strikes were part of an exchange of intelligence and strategic coordination between the two countries.
The Associated Press could not confirm the extent of the strikes' impact. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a post on X about the airstrikes, said: “More to come...”
The armed groups in Africa’s most populous country include at least two affiliated with the Islamic State — an offshoot of the Boko Haram extremist group known as the Islamic State West Africa Province in the northeast, and the lesser-known Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) known locally as Lakurawa and prominent in the northwest.
Although officials did not say exactly which group was targeted, security analysts said the target, if indeed against Islamic State militants, was likely members of Lakurawa, which became more lethal in border states like Sokoto and Kebbi in the last year, often targeting remote communities and security forces.
The Nigerian military has said in the past that the group has roots in neighboring Niger and that it became more active in Nigeria's border communities following a 2023 military coup. That coup resulted in fractured relations between Nigeria and Niger, and affected their multinational military operations along the porous border.
Multiple analysts have said Lakurawa has been active in northwest Nigeria since around 2017 when it was invited by traditional authorities in Sokoto to protect their communities from bandit groups.
The militants, however, "overstayed their welcome, clashing with some of the community leaders ... and enforcing a harsh interpretation of sharia law that alienated much of the rural population,” according to James Barnett, an Africa researcher with the Washington-based Hudson Institute.
“Communities now openly say that Lakurawa are more oppressive and dangerous than the bandits they claim to protect them from," according to Malik Samuel, a Nigerian security researcher with Good Governance Africa.
Lakurawa controls territories in Sokoto and Kebbi states, and has become known for killings, kidnapping, rape and armed robbery, Samuel said.
But some of the attacks blamed on Lakurawa are by the Islamic State Sahel Province, which has expanded from Niger’s Dosso region to northwestern Nigeria, according to the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
“ISSP has maintained a low profile, operating covertly to infiltrate and entrench itself along the Niger-Nigeria border, and is now also expanding its operations toward the Beninese border,” the project said in a recent report.
The security woes are more of a governance problem than a military one.
Motives for attacks differ but the gangs are often driven by the near absence of a state and security presence in conflict hot spots, making recruitment easy. Those hot spots, data show, have some of the country's highest levels of poverty, hunger and lack of jobs.
Nigeria’s Minister of Defense Christopher Musa once said in his past capacity as the defense chief that military action is only 30% of what is needed to fix the country's security crisis, while the remaining 70% depends on good governance.
“The absence of the state in remote communities is making it easy for non-state actors to come in and present themselves to the people as the best alternative government,” said Samuel.
Thursday's U.S. strikes were seen as crucial help for Nigeria’s security forces, which are often overstretched and outgunned as they fight multiple security crises across different regions.
In states like Sokoto, the military often carries out airstrikes targeting militant hideouts and Nigeria has embarked on mass recruitment of security forces.
But analysts say military operations targeting the gangs are not usually sustained and the militants easily move on motorcycles to new locations through vast forests that connect several states in the north.
They also often use hostages — including schoolchildren — as cover, making airstrikes difficult.
President Donald Trump speaks at his Mar-a-Lago club, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
