Philippine school shooting leaves two dead, police say

A school shooting at Ateneo de Zamboanga University in the southern Philippines left a grade 10 student and the alleged shooter dead on Tuesday, police and the school said.

Regional police said a ninth-grade student brought a pistol and a rifle onto the campus of the Catholic private institution in western Mindanao and opened fire in a classroom, killing one person before shooting himself. Police spokeswoman Shella Chang said investigators were still trying to identify a motive and the crime scene was being processed.

The school confirmed two fatalities and said it had coordinated with parents and guardians to pick up children and had secured those still on campus.

Zamboanga City Mayor Khymer Olaso told local radio that video circulated by local media appeared to show the shooter first firing at a teacher seated at a table, missing, then moving to another room and shooting another student. It was not immediately clear how many people had been injured.

School shootings are rare in the Philippines, but three teenage students were killed and 20 others wounded in the central Philippines in June. Ateneo de Zamboanga held an active shooter drill last month. Legal gun ownership is tightly regulated in the country, but a large black market for firearms exists.