The council official has been rushed to hospital, police confirmed - while the ex-MP is in custody

Chaos has unfolded in Thailand after a former MP stormed the council offices for the area where Friday's school shooting took place - and shot the council leader.

Chalong Riewraeng, the ex-MP for Nonthaburi, is reported to have entered the local provincial hall and shot the President of the Nonthaburi Provincial Administrative Organisation.

Reporters heard multiple gunshots inside the NPAO building in the local city hall at around 11.30am local time (5.30am BST).

Police have now confirmed the official, police colonel Thongchai Yenprasert, has been rushed to hospital.

Reports in local media say both he and his driver have been left seriously injured.

The suspect, named only as a former lawmaker, has been detained, police added.

Both this morning's attack and the school shooting took place around seven miles apart in Nonthaburi province, in the outskirts of Thai capital Bangkok.

On Friday, a teenage student killed six people then himself at a school after allegedly shooting dead his grandparents.

It marked the country's worst mass killing in nearly four years.

Police were already on high alert after the shooting, and have been seen carrying out high-security checks around the school in the days since.

Police said the boy had been learning how to use a firearm online and that last year a teacher had confiscated a BB gun which he had taken to school.

"According to witness interviews, the perpetrator had begun showing interest in studying the use of firearms for some time, about one to two years," police said.

The boy lived with his grandparents, and his mother said she last saw him during a recent school holiday.

"On the day it happened, I didn't know he was the one who did it," she said, adding that she sent him messages and tried to call when she heard there had been a shooting.

"I just told him, if anything's wrong, contact me, I’m worried, that's all it was."

She also apologised for his actions, adding: "We are truly devastated, because no one thought this would happen."

Alongside the dead, more than 20 people were injured in Thailand's worst mass shooting since 2022.

It has sparked a furious debate over gun control in southeast Asia's largest gun-owning nation.

Thailand's Prime Minister vowed to introduce a new firearms control law following the tragedy.