Gunfire as Philippine authorities try to arrest senator

Gunshots rang out in the Philippine Senate, where authorities were trying to arrest a senator wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity.

It was not immediately clear what triggered the gunfire Wednesday night or whether there were injuries in the Senate, where senator Ronald dela Rosa was being held in protective custody by allied senators as Filipino authorities tried to arrest him and possibly extradite him to the ICC later.

The ICC on Monday issued an arrest warrant for dela Rosa, the former national police chief who first implemented then-President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug crackdown, killing thousands of mostly minor suspects.

The arrest warrant, first issued in November, accuses dela Rosa of killing “at least 32 people” in crimes against humanity between July 2016 and the end of April 2018, when he led the national police agency under Duterte.