At least fifteen shots rang out inside the Philippine Senate on Wednesday as authorities moved to arrest Senator Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa on an International Criminal Court warrant charging him with crimes against humanity, and the 64-year-old former police chief slipped away in the chaos.
No one was reported injured. But the spectacle of live gunfire inside a working legislative chamber, competing official accounts of who pulled the trigger, and a sitting senator on the run from international justice left the Philippines facing its most volatile political crisis in years.
The confrontation had been building for days. Dela Rosa showed up at the Senate on Monday to support ally Alan Peter Cayetano's bid for president of the chamber, and found agents from the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation waiting to take him into custody and hand him over to the ICC. He ran past the agents and threw himself into the Senate chamber, where the NBI lacked authority to follow.
From there, he camped out in his Senate office, prowling the halls in shorts and slippers while the legal and political machinery ground forward around him.
The ICC had issued a sealed arrest warrant for dela Rosa in November 2025. It was not unsealed until May 2026. AP News reported the warrant accuses dela Rosa of murder as a crime against humanity involving at least 32 killings between July 2016 and April 2018, the period when he served as national police chief under then-President Rodrigo Duterte.
Dela Rosa's relationship with Duterte stretches back decades. He served as police chief in Duterte's hometown of Davao City in the 1990s, when Duterte was mayor. After Duterte won the presidency in 2016, he tapped dela Rosa to run the Philippine National Police. One of dela Rosa's first acts was issuing the directive that formally launched Project Double Barrel, the anti-drug campaign that human rights groups accused of killing over 12,000 people. More than 2,500 of those deaths were directly attributed to the PNP.
Duterte himself was charged with the same offenses and arrested by the ICC in March 2025. He has been detained at the ICC facility in the Netherlands ever since, though he managed to win re-election as mayor of Davao City from his jail cell in May 2025.
ICC judges last year rejected a request from Duterte's legal team to dismiss the case, ruling that countries cannot "abuse" their right to withdraw from the Rome Statute "by shielding persons from justice in relation to alleged crimes that are already under consideration."
By Wednesday afternoon, dela Rosa's legal options narrowed sharply. The Philippine Supreme Court declined to issue a temporary restraining order against his arrest. It gave President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. 72 hours to respond to dela Rosa's petition to block the ICC warrant, but offered no immediate shield.
During a break in Senate proceedings, dela Rosa went on Facebook with a direct appeal. He declared authorities were preparing to arrest him.
"I am here calling for your help: let us not have another Filipino brought to The Hague like President Duterte."
Then, on Wednesday evening, the situation broke open. Police reportedly decided to force their way into the chambers and arrest dela Rosa, supported by troops from the Philippine Marine Corps. A brawl erupted. Someone fired at least 15 shots.
Who fired them remains in dispute.
Senate Secretary Mark Llandro Mendoza claimed the shots came from NBI agents who attempted to force their way into the Senate and discharged their firearms after they were forced to retreat. The NBI flatly denied any of its agents were in the building at the time of the shooting.
A press spokesperson for Marcos' office offered a third version: the gunfire came from Mao Aplasca, described as the Senate's sergeant-at-arms, who spotted what he believed to be an NBI agent and fired warning shots.
President Marcos addressed the situation Wednesday night. He denied giving orders to arrest dela Rosa and said armed police and troops seen at the Senate were there for protection, not enforcement.
"The government did not do this. No soldier, military, or NBI agent entered the Senate. We do not know who tried to enter."
He pressed further, raising the possibility that the chaos was not organic.
"We will find out who caused this chaos. Was this really just an encounter? Is this part of attempts to destabilize the government or trigger chaos? We need to know the truth."
Amid the confusion, dela Rosa made his exit. He fled the Senate building accompanied by fellow Senator Robin Padilla. His whereabouts afterward were not immediately clear.
By Thursday, police spokesman Randulf Tuano confirmed in a radio interview that an individual had been arrested in connection with the shooting. Tuano added that "the person has provided names, but these still need confirmation." The identity of the arrested individual was not disclosed.
The NBI announced it was launching a nationwide manhunt for dela Rosa.
But the PNP, the very agency dela Rosa once led, clarified that it would not put him under arrest. The reason: it lacked the authority to do so and had not yet been formally presented with a copy of the ICC arrest warrant. Aplasca, acting as sergeant-at-arms for the PNP, said Thursday that dela Rosa had contacted the agency and asked to be placed under PNP custody, a move that could complicate the ICC's demand for his surrender.
The Philippines' political landscape has been fracturing along Duterte-era fault lines for months. Dela Rosa held the PNP chief post until 2018 and rode his drug war prominence to a Senate seat in 2019. By May 2026, he was into his second term.
Duterte's daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, has been at the center of her own political firestorm. She has been accused of misusing public funds and publicly threatening violence against Marcos and his family. In November 2024, she publicly accused Marcos of plotting to assassinate her and said she had made arrangements for the murder of Marcos, first lady Liza Araneta, and House Speaker Martin Romualdez in the event of her own death. She has been impeached twice by the lower House.
Rodrigo Duterte, for his part, struck a resigned tone from detention. He described the drug war as an effort to give Filipinos "a little peace and tranquility."
"What was my sin? I did everything in my time so Filipinos can have a little peace and tranquility. If this is my fate in life, it's OK, I'll accept it. I can't do anything if I get arrested and jailed."
Dela Rosa, before the shooting, suggested Duterte was leaving the fight to him. "He is leaving everything up to me," dela Rosa said.
The basic facts of Wednesday's confrontation are still in dispute. Who ordered the armed entry into the Senate? Who fired the shots, and at whom? Was the Marine Corps deployment authorized by the president or by someone further down the chain? And where is dela Rosa now?
The NBI says it is hunting him. The PNP says it cannot arrest him. The Senate says its halls were violated. The president says he gave no such orders. Somebody is not telling the truth.
When a sitting senator can dodge an international arrest warrant by sprinting into a legislative chamber, broadcast a plea for help on Facebook, and then vanish into the night while 15 rounds echo through the halls of government, the question is no longer whether the system is under strain. It's whether the system still exists at all.
