A police officer shot dead his teacher wife at the kindergarten where she worked in Thailand on Wednesday but all the children are safe, officials said.

The gunman returned home after the shooting in Chonburi province, southeast of Bangkok, where police were negotiating his surrender.

The incident is the latest shooting to rock Thailand, a month after a teenager shot his grandparents and then five staff and a pupil at his school, before killing himself.

Thailand has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the region, and past promises of tightening gun laws have not prevented repeated shootings.

Sayan Klomaon, chairman of Nong Pla Lai sub-district council, told AFP the gunman — a policeman local to the area — came to the school at about 10:30am (08:30am PKT) and talked with his wife before shooting her.

No students saw the incident, as it happened outside the classroom, he said, adding that the gunman then left to go home, and since then all the children had been picked up.

In a statement on Facebook, Chonburi Governor Naris Niramaiwong confirmed that all 44 children were safely evacuated along with three teachers and three other staff members.

He said police had surrounded the house where the gunman was and were negotiating his surrender.

The motive remains unclear.

Naris ordered the kindergarten closed and said psychological support will be provided to children and staff who witnessed the incident.

In 2022, an ex-policeman armed with a gun and a knife stormed a nursery in northern Thailand and killed 24 children and 12 adults, in one of the country’s deadliest massacres.

In 2020, a soldier killed 29 people in a shooting rampage in Nakhon Ratchasima. And in 2023, a 14-year-old used a modified handgun to kill two people and wound five others at a luxury Bangkok shopping centre.