A student in the southern Philippines livestreamed himself shooting and killing a fellow pupil in a classroom before taking his own life. The incident occurred at a school attached to Ateneo de Zamboanga University in the city of Zamboanga, a Catholic private institution in western Mindanao.
According to Zamboanga city’s mayor, Khymer Adan Olaso, the shooter managed to enter the school carrying a high-powered firearm and a .45-calibre pistol. The interior secretary, Victor Remulla, confirmed that the ninth-grade suspect had livestreamed the attack on social media. The shooter’s Facebook account has since been disabled.
In the video, which was circulated by local media, the barrel of a gun is seen moving down a hallway before it is pointed into a classroom and fired. Children in school uniforms are seen screaming and rushing for an exit. National police are now trying to establish the motive behind the shooting, determine the ownership and source of the firearm used, and find out how it was brought inside the school campus.
Hours later, the Philippines’ customs department said it had ordered the preventive suspension of an agent who owned the guns allegedly used by the student involved. The customs deputy chief of staff, Noel Bendijo, stated that customs staff had acted on intelligence from their own officers in Zamboanga.
The incident is the second school attack in the Philippines in less than two months. In June, three students were killed and about 20 injured after two students opened fire on campus at a public high school in Tacloban City. The Philippine president, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr, has directed law enforcement agencies to conduct a thorough investigation into the incident and to determine what more must be done to prevent another family, another school, and another community from suffering the same grief.
The incident has raised concerns about violence among secondary school students in South-east Asia. A similar incident occurred earlier this month in Thailand, where a 14-year-old boy allegedly shot his grandparents and then killed more people at his school before turning the gun on himself. Nine people died, including the shooter, teachers, and a 12-year-old girl, and more than 30 were wounded.
