Two people died after a shooting incident at a school in southern Phillipines in the city of Zamboanga on Tuesday.
Both the deceased were students while one of them was the shooter himself, Zamboanga Mayor Khymer Adan Olaso told DZMM radio.
This was the second such incident in the country in a span of two months.
The shooting occurred in a school attached with the Ateneo de Zamboanga University, a private institution in the city. The gunman had brought a pistol as well a rifle inside the school premises and started firing at students inside a classroom, Reuters reported citing a preliminary police report.
The gunman was a grade 9 student. The male student who died in the firing was in grade 10. It is believed that the gunman died from a self-inflicted shot.
Ernald Andal, the president of the university, has announced that there is no longer an active shooter in the school and the situation is now under control.
"We do not want any of these things to happen. We wish to prioritise the safety of all our students," Andal said, as per a Reuters report.
This shooting comes in the wake of another such attack in a Phillippine school in June this year. The incident occurred in Tacloban City where three students died in the attack while 20 others were injured. Two students were involved in open firing on the campus.
School shootings do not happen often in the Philippines, since unlike the US, the country has strong laws regarding ownership of firearms. Those guying guns have to go through background checks as well as psychological evaluation. However, illegal arms do remain in circulation.
Parents and students gathered near the school in the wake of the attack while police officials as well as soldiers were also present. Crime scene investigators were also seeing arriving at the institution.
The school is a five-storey building. It is located inside a8-hectare (19.8 acre) plot of land where it shares space with the university's grade school and junior high school students.
This incident comes in the wake of a school shooting in Thailand on 6 August in which at least seven people died. The teenager who carried out the shooting had earlier killed his grandparents before opening fire inside the school premises.
