UTHAI SAWAN, Oct 7 — Crying and clutching toys, traumatised relatives gathered at a child day care centre in Thailand where a day earlier a former policeman had slain 34 people, most of them children, in a knife and gun rampage that horrified the nation.

Government buildings flew flags at half mast on Friday to mourn victims — 23 of them children — of the carnage in Uthai Sawan, a town 500 km (310 miles) northeast of Bangkok, the capital of the largely Buddhist country.

After leaving the day care centre — a pink, one-storey building surrounded by a lawn and small palm trees — filled with dead, dying and wounded, the ex-officer went home and shot dead his wife and son before turning his weapon on himself.

Most of the children, aged between two and five years, were slashed to death, while adults were shot, police said in the aftermath of the worst child death tolls in a massacre by a single killer in recent history.

The aunt of a three-year old boy who died in the slaughter held a stuffed dog and a toy tractor in her lap as she recounted how she had rushed to the scene when the news first spread.

“I came and I saw two bodies in front of the school and I immediately knew that my kid was already dead,” said Suwimon Sudfanpitak, 40, who had been looking after her nephew, Techin, while his parents worked in Bangkok.

Also among the dead, was Kritsana Sola, a chubby cheeked two-year-old who loved dinosaurs and football and was nicknamed “captain”. He had just got a new haircut and was proudly showing it off, said his aunt, Naliwan Duangket, 27.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-cha was due to visit the area on Friday. King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida were also due to meet victim’s families, according to a local announcement.

Police identified the attacker as Panya Khamrap, 34, a former police sergeant who was discharged over drug allegations and who was facing trial on a drugs charge.

Panya had gone to the daycare centre to collect his child after attending court earlier in the day, police spokesperson Paisal Luesomboon told broadcaster ThaiPBS. When he did not find his child there, he began the killing spree.

“He started shooting, slashing, killing children,” Paisal said.

Chakkraphat Wichitvaidya, a local police official, told Reuters autopsies showed the children had been slashed with a large knife, sometimes multiple times, and adults shot.

He said police were investigating the motive, while suspecting that Panya could have been triggered by stress.

“I don’t know (why he did this), but he was under a lot of pressure,” Panya’s mother told Nation TV, citing debts her son had run up and his drug taking.

‘I begged him for mercy’

Photographs taken at the daycare centre by the rescue team and shared with Reuters showed the tiny bodies of those killed laid out on blankets. Abandoned juice boxes were scattered across the floor.

“He was heading towards me and I begged him for mercy, I didn’t know what to do,” one distraught woman told ThaiPBS, fighting back tears.

“He didn’t say anything, he shot at the door while the kids were sleeping,” another woman said, becoming distraught.

The attacker forced his way into a locked room where the children were sleeping, Jidapa said. Three boys and a girl who survived the attack were being treated in hospital, police said.

There were about 30 children at the centre when the attack began, which was fewer than usual as heavy rain had kept many people away, said district official Jidapa Boonsom.

The massacre is among the worst involving children killed by one person. Anders Breivik killed 69 people, mostly teenagers, at a summer camp in Norway in 2011, while the death toll in other cases include 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut in 2012, 16 at Dunblane in Scotland in 1996 and 19 at a school in Uvalde, Texas, this year.

Gun laws are strict in Thailand, but gun ownership is high compared with some South-east Asian countries, and illegal weapons are common, with many brought in from strife-torn neighbours in the region. — Reuters