Gunshots reported at Philippine Senate as politician evades ICC warrant
Interior Secretary Juanito Victor Remulla told reporters no one had been hurt and said authorities were still trying to identify and locate the gunmen.
Gunfire shattered the calm at the Philippine Senate on Tuesday, forcing senators to shelter in their offices as a lawmaker sought by the International Criminal Court remained inside the building.
At least five shots echoed through the Senate complex, according to AFP journalists inside, moments after soldiers carrying rifles and wearing protective gear moved up the building’s stairs.
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Interior Secretary Juanito Victor Remulla told reporters no one had been hurt and said authorities were still trying to identify and locate the gunmen.
Mr Remulla, who arrived shortly after the shooting, said the fugitive senator was still inside the premises.
“I am here to ensure the integrity of the Senate and the protection of all the senators,” Mr Remulla said.
He said Mr Dela Rosa “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.”
Earlier in the day, Mr Dela Rosa had called on the military to push back against any effort to detain him, appealing to former colleagues to resist what he described as attempts by President Ferdinand Marcos’s government to surrender him to the ICC.
“My fellow men in uniform” should “express their sentiment” that the government “should not hand me over to foreigners”, he said.
‘Under attack’
The Philippine’s Supreme Court, meanwhile, gave the government three days to respond to Dela Rosa’s petition seeking to block any arrest and transfer to the ICC.
Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano, who had prevented government agents from arresting his ally Mr Dela Rosa, said on his official Facebook page that he did not know who opened fire.
“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 had tried to arrest Mr Dela Rosa at the Senate on Monday, said his officers were not responsible for 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 when the shooting occurred.
One television journalist was seen in tears while reporting live from inside the building, as another senator, Robin Padilla, called on reporters to leave the area.
Mr Dela Rosa, widely known as “Bato”, was national police chief from 2016 to 2018 during the opening stretch of Mr Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.
The campaign left thousands dead, including many drug users and small-scale narcotics sellers, human rights monitors say.
Mr Duterte was arrested in March last year, flown to the Netherlands the same day and is now being held in The Hague pending trial.
Mr Dela Rosa had not appeared in public since November before resurfacing on Monday for a surprise vote that helped loyalists of Mr Duterte seize control of the Senate.
