Two students killed in Philippine school shooting and teen suspect dead, officials say

Two students were killed in a school shooting in the southern Philippines on Friday and the 16-year-old suspected gunman turned the gun on himself, provincial officials said. Eight others were injured, with four in critical condition, and all the victims were students aged 14 to 17, said Albert Palencia, mayor of Banga town in South Cotabato, where the shooting took place. The incident follows two fatal gun incidents since June at schools in the Philippines, where school shootings were previously rare. “The suspect supposedly sat beside his friends and told them to go home ‘because after lunch, I will be executing my plan’. His friends laughed because the shooter was a known joker,” Palencia told Reuters. “After lunch, he started shooting students. He hit 10 students before killing himself,” Palencia added. The suspect appeared to have fired indiscriminately at students in a classroom next to his own after leaving his Grade 9 classroom, Palencia said in a separate interview with local DZBB radio. The mayor said the suspect used a 9-mm pistol belonging to his father, a Department of Education employee, after breaking into a vault where the firearm had been stored and bringing it to school. Palencia said the gunman carried two magazines for the weapon and reloaded them after emptying the first one before turning the gun at himself. The suspect was described by Palencia as an intelligent student and active taekwondo practitioner. There was no indication he had been bullied. Authorities are also examining whether online communities may have played a role in the attack. The mayor, citing police information, said investigations found the teenager posted in an online “true crime” community and were looking to determine the nature of the group. The disclosure comes after a Senate inquiry into a deadly school shooting in Tacloban in June examined the role of the so-called True Crime Community, which police cybercrime officials described as an online network of young people who share and consume violent extremist content. At least three students were killed and about 20 others injured in an attack at a public high school in Tacloban, where two classmates opened fire on campus. Last month, a student live-streamed himself shooting and killing another student in a classroom in Zamboanga in the country’s south before taking ‌his own life. The Philippines has relatively strict gun ownership regulations, including background checks and psychological evaluation requirements, although illegal firearms remain in circulation. The Friday shooting also follows a high-profile incident in Thailand in August, where a student went on a shooting rampage at a school on the outskirts of the capital Bangkok. South Cotabato governor Reynaldo Tamayo urged parents to ensure guns were kept out of reach of minors. “We need to be responsible in storing firearms. Gun owners, in particular, must make sure that minors do not have access to them,” Tamayo told Reuters by phone. “We cannot expect a handful of security personnel to monitor thousands of students. We need to work together because otherwise this will be very difficult for us to address.” This story has been updated.