Three people were killed, including a 16-year-old suspected gunman who turned the weapon on himself, in a shooting at Banga National High School in the southern Philippines on Friday, September 18, 2026, provincial officials said.
Eight other students were wounded, four of them critically, and everyone hit by gunfire was between 14 and 17 years old, said Albert Palencia, mayor of Banga town in South Cotabato province on the island of Mindanao. Reynaldo Tamayo, governor of South Cotabato, said the two slain students were 14-year-olds — one a boy, the other a girl — while the shooter himself accounted for the third death.
Emergency services were called to the campus at about 1:30 p.m. local time (0530 GMT). The Philippine Red Cross said it was alerted at 2 p.m. local time and sent an ambulance with four paramedics. Red Cross workers and local rescue personnel were at the scene, and police were at the school investigating, local media reported.
Mayor Recounts Lunchtime Warning
“After lunch, he started shooting students. He hit 10 students before killing himself,” he added.
The suspect, a Grade 9 student, walked out of his own classroom and appeared to fire at random on students in the room next door, Palencia said in an interview with local DZBB radio. According to the mayor, the teenager took his father’s 9-mm pistol — the father is employed by the Department of Education — prying open the vault where it was kept and bringing it onto the campus. He brought two magazines and reloaded after emptying the first one before turning the gun on himself.
Authorities Examine Online Communities
Palencia described the suspect as an intelligent student and an active taekwondo practitioner, and said there was no indication he had been bullied. Citing police, the mayor said investigators found the teenager had posted in an online “true crime” community, and authorities are working to determine the nature of the group and whether such communities played any part in the attack.
That line of inquiry follows a Senate investigation into the June school shooting in Tacloban, which examined the role of the so-called True Crime Community — which police cybercrime officials characterize as a web-based circle where young users pass around and consume violent extremist material.
Conflicting Figures and Suspended Classes
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) first reported that six students had been killed and 17 wounded, later revising the toll to three dead and eight injured. In a video posted on Facebook, a man was seen carrying what appeared to be a wounded child away from the school. In another video, a teacher speaking in a local dialect said there were two shooters, while a student insisted they were outsiders; official accounts have described a single gunman, and the Philippine Department of Education urged the public to stay calm and to avoid circulating unverified information while the investigation continues.
The education department voiced grave concern over the attack and said it was working jointly with school administrators, municipal officials and police to piece together what happened and to offer help, noting that protecting the safety and welfare of students, teachers and staff came first. Classes at all levels across the entire municipality of Banga were suspended, the Banga Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office said.
Tamayo urged gun owners to store their firearms responsibly and to make certain that minors cannot reach them. “We cannot expect a handful of security personnel to monitor thousands of students,” Tamayo said.
Third Campus Shooting Since June
Friday’s bloodshed was the third deadly school shooting in the Philippines since June, in a country where such attacks had previously been rare. The June assault at a public high school in Tacloban left no fewer than three students dead and roughly 20 more hurt after two classmates opened fire; two suspects, aged 14 and 15, were arrested, and investigators believed the attack was driven by a grudge over bullying.
On August 18, a student at Ateneo de Zamboanga University live-streamed himself shooting a fellow student in a classroom in Zamboanga before taking his own life. Two students died, including the gunman. In that case, the suspect’s shot at a teacher failed to hit her, after which he walked into a different classroom and wounded a student who died later. Two others were wounded.
Gun ownership in the Philippines is tightly regulated, with buyers subject to background checks and psychological evaluations, yet illegal weapons still circulate widely and few countries in the region see firearms owned at such a high rate. The Banga attack also came after a high-profile shooting in Thailand in August, when a student went on a rampage at a school on the outskirts of Bangkok.
The Philippine National Police said the incident remains under investigation, and that officers who responded sealed off the area and worked with school authorities and medical teams to help those affected and safeguard students and staff. Authorities have not disclosed a possible motive for the shooting.