Philippine student killed in rare school shooting / Photo: Roel Parreno - AFP
Philippine student killed in rare school shooting
A grade 10 student was shot dead at a high school in the southern Philippines on Tuesday before the alleged killer took his own life, police said.
The school shooting, the country's second in as many months, took place at Ateneo de Zamboanga University, a Catholic private institution in western Mindanao.
Regional police said a ninth-grade student had brought a "pistol and rifle inside the school campus" and opened fire in a classroom, killing one person before turning the gun on himself.
"The investigation is ongoing... We are still trying to identify the motive," police spokeswoman Shella Chang told AFP, adding the crime scene was now being processed.
It was not immediately clear how many had been injured.
In a video circulated by local media that was seemingly live-streamed on Facebook, the barrel of a gun can be seen moving down a hallway in the style of a first-person shooter video game before being pointed into a classroom and fired.
Children in school uniforms are then seen screaming and rushing for an exit.
The alleged shooter's Facebook account has since been disabled.
"In the video, we see that he first shot at the teacher who was sitting at a table," Zamboanga City mayor Khymer Olaso, who initially identified the shooter as a seventh grader, told a local radio station.
"It seems he missed, then moved to another room... He shot another student there," he said.
The school separately confirmed the two fatalities.
"We have already coordinated with parents and guardians to pick up their children and the university has ensured the safety of those remaining on campus," it said in a statement.
School shootings are rare in the Philippines, but three teenaged students were killed and 20 others wounded in the central Philippines in June.
Ateneo de Zamboanga last month became one of many schools across the country to conduct active shooter drills.
Legal gun ownership is tightly regulated in the Southeast Asian country, but a large black market exists for firearms.
B.Johansson--StDgbl
