A chaotic incident unfolded at the Philippine Senate complex late Wednesday, when multiple gunshots rang out as fugitive Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, a former police chief wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over crimes against humanity allegations linked to his role in Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly drug war, holed up inside the building to avoid arrest.
According to AFP journalists on the scene, at least five distinct gunshots were heard, forcing senators, staff, and journalists to lock themselves in offices for safety. Television footage captured a visibly shaken crying reporter delivering a live on-air report from inside the locked-down building, while Senator Robin Padilla publicly urged all journalists present to evacuate the premises immediately.
Interior Secretary Juanito Victor Remulla told reporters that no casualties have been reported, and the operation to identify and locate the shooter remains ongoing. Remulla confirmed Dela Rosa remained secured inside the Senate complex, adding that “he is safe. He is with security personnel. He has been informed of our activities. We have assured him that there is no warrant of arrest to be served.”
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. released an immediate public statement denying that any government forces deployed inside or around the Senate compound had fired the shots. He clarified that agents assigned to arrest Dela Rosa had already been ordered to stand down earlier that day, following a Supreme Court directive that required the administration to justify its planned arrest and extradition of the senator to the Netherlands, where the ICC is based.
“The thing to do now is to tell all our people to calm down and we will get to the bottom of this. We will determine who is behind this trouble,” Marcos said in an address broadcast on state television.
The incident is the latest escalation of a long-simmering political crisis tied to the Duterte-era drug war. Dela Rosa, widely known by his nickname “Bato”, served as chief of the Philippine National Police from 2016 to 2018, overseeing the opening phase of Duterte’s brutal anti-narcotics crackdown that human rights monitors say left thousands of mostly low-level drug users and small-scale peddlers dead. Duterte himself was arrested by ICC authorities last March and is currently detained in The Hague awaiting trial on related charges.
Dela Rosa had stayed out of public view since November before making a surprise return this week, casting a critical vote that helped Duterte loyalists seize control of the Senate leadership. Just minutes before the gunshots rang out, Senator Vicente Sotto released a statement reporting that protesters had thrown water bottles at his car as he drove alone out of the Senate complex.
Earlier that same Wednesday, Dela Rosa made a public appeal to current and former members of the Philippine military and police to oppose his extradition, urging uniformed personnel to resist any move by the Marcos administration to hand him over to the international court. “My fellow men in uniform” should “express their sentiment” that the government “should not hand me over to foreigners”, he said.
Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano, who blocked government agents from arresting Dela Rosa earlier this week, wrote on his official Facebook page that authorities had no leads on the source of the gunfire. “We heard gunshots and we don’t know what is happening. Everyone’s locked in their rooms now. We cannot go out, we cannot secure our other staff,” he added. “Why are we under attack here?”
Melvin Matibag, director of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), whose agents attempted to arrest Dela Rosa at the Senate on Monday, denied that any NBI personnel were involved in the shooting. “We were on a stand down,” he told ABS-CBN network in an interview, adding there were no NBI agents inside the Senate building when the gunshots occurred.