NNA - Grief-stricken relatives sobbed and clutched toys at a children's daycare centre on Friday, a day after a former policeman killed 34 people, most of them young children, in a knife and gun rampage there that has horrified Thailand.

Government buildings flew flags at half mast 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 daycare centre filled with dead, dying and wounded, the ex-officer went home and shot dead his wife and son before turning his weapon on himself.

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

It was not clear if Panya still used drugs. An autopsy report indicated he had not used them on the day of the attack, national police chief Damrongsak Kittipraphat said on Friday.

"The reasons are probably unemployment, no money, and family issues," he said, adding that the attacker and his wife had had "longstanding problems".

"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.

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

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