MANILA, Philippines — The number of students wounded in a school shooting in Tacloban City has risen to 20, police said on Tuesday, June 23, a day after two teenagers opened fire on their classmates.
Three students were killed in the attack at San Jose National High School, bringing the total number of victims to 23. All were minors.
Related Stories
Of the 20 wounded, 15 had gunshot injuries and were still in the hospital on Tuesday. The other five were hurt in other ways, the Police Regional Office 8 said.
The two attackers, both boys aged 14 and 15, opened fire inside the school on Monday morning in one of the deadliest campus attacks in the country in recent years.
Before the Tacloban shooting, the last widely reported gun attack on a public school occurred in Nueva Ecija in August 2025, when an 18-year-old shot a 15-year-old student inside a classroom at Sta. Rosa Integrated School.
Police have confirmed the 9mm Glock pistol used in the Tacloban shooting belonged to a policewomen who is a relative of one of the students. She has since been relieved of her post.
The two attackers, both minors and tagged by police as children in conflict with the law, are to be turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development for legal and intervention proceedings.
Education chief: More than a security problem
Education Secretary Sonny Angara, who visited the school on Tuesday, said the shooting pointed to problems broader than campus security.
He said the two attackers had been exposed to violence online and, like many children in such cases, had little parental supervision. Angara said based on his conversations with teachers, one of the attackers had a father looking for work in another province.
"It is not just a peace-and-order problem. The children also need to be managed," Angara said in Filipino.
He said teachers and principals had to take on part of that role. "We are really like parents here. We should check on the children and watch for whether something is wrong, whether a child is not their usual self," he said.
DepEd is now eyeing the rollout of a revised emergency protocol for school shootings, which Angara said he had never expected to use. He said Health Secretary Ted Herbosa had brought this to his attention.
"It is something we never thought was applicable, but it turns out it exists," he said. "We just have to update it — what to do, how to drop to the ground, the behavior to keep down the loss of life.
Angara said responsibility for the attack lay with whoever had let a gun reach a child.
He did not fault the school staff, saying the teachers had kept the death toll from rising and that the principal was not to blame.
"It is not natural for children to have a gun. Not every home has one," he said. "How did the child get hold of a gun?"
Angara linked the violence partly to the presence of gangs, which he said the city mayor had told him became more prominent after the pandemic.
The DepEd chief said he had not yet spoken to the two suspects. "I would like to talk to them, to understand their mindset," he said.
A week of school violence
The shooting was the third act of violence carried out on school grounds in about a week.
On June 16, a Grade 8 student stabbed seven Grade 5 pupils with a kitchen knife at a private school in General Trias, Cavite. On June 19, a senior high school student was stabbed at a school in Cavite City.
The attacks have prompted the Philippine National Police to say they will coordinate with DepEd on protecting students, and have revived debate in the Senate over how the law treats minors who commit serious crimes.
Republic Act 9344 or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act sets the minimum age of criminal responsibility at 15 years old. A surge of "misinformation" about the law was flagged by Sen. Kiko Pangilinan yesterday, who clarified the law does not absolve minors from committing crimes. Instead, minor offenders must go through a structured rehabilitation and diversion process within the juvenile justice system.
On Tuesday, Angara vowed the immediate provision of psychosocial support for teachers, staff and students. He siad he has ordered the assignment of guidance counselors to help students deal with the aftermath of the shooting.
Angara said last year that the Philippines had about 4,069 licensed guidance counselors, far short of the international benchmark of one for every 250 students. The department has said it aims to hire about 15,000 counselor associates by the end of the year.