A shooting at Banga National High School in the southern Philippines left three people dead on Friday, September 18, 2026, provincial officials said, among them the suspected gunman, 16, who turned the weapon on himself.
Eight other students were wounded, four of them critically, said Albert Palencia, mayor of Banga town in South Cotabato province, on the island of Mindanao. Everyone hit by gunfire was between 14 and 17 years old, Palencia said.
The two slain students were 14-year-olds, one a boy and one a girl, said Reynaldo Tamayo, governor of South Cotabato.
Doctors had referred one student to the Cotabato Regional and Medical Center in Cotabato City, where the patient remained in the intensive care unit in critical condition as of Saturday, September 19, according to Joseph Franco, head of the Banga Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office. Three students were discharged from the hospital at about 7:15 p.m. on Friday, September 18 and taken home, Franco said, and three others were referred from South Cotabato Provincial Hospital to two private hospitals in Koronadal City.
“May nai-refer tayo sa Cotabato Regional and Medical Center sa Cotabato City kasi kritikal ‘yon. Nasa ICU ngayon for further observation sa status ng isang pasyente,” Franco said in an interview on Dobol B TV.
How the Attack Unfolded
Emergency services were called at about 1:30 p.m. local time (0530 GMT) to the campus, which is in Barangay Benitez. The suspect was a Grade 9 student.
Classmates were told by the teenager that morning to leave for home, Palencia said, since his plan would be put into action once lunch was over. The suspect then stepped out of the classroom he was in and, the mayor said, sprayed gunfire that seemed to target students next door at random.
“After lunch, he started shooting students. He hit 10 students before killing himself,” Palencia said in an interview with local DZBB radio.
The teenager took his father’s 9-mm pistol, according to the mayor. The father is a Department of Education employee. The teenager pried open the vault where the weapon was kept and brought it onto the campus, and he carried two magazines, reloading after emptying the first.
An intelligent student and an active taekwondo practitioner was how Palencia characterized the suspect, adding that nothing suggested he had been bullied.
Investigators found that the teenager had posted in an online “true crime” community, the mayor said, citing police. What kind of group it is, and whether communities of that sort had any hand in the attack, is something authorities are still trying to establish.
An ambulance carrying four paramedics was dispatched by the Philippine Red Cross, which said the alert reached it at 2 p.m.
Responding officers sealed off the area and coordinated with school authorities and medical teams, the Philippine National Police said, adding that the incident remains under investigation. A possible motive has not been disclosed by Authorities.
Conflicting Casualty Counts
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) first reported six students killed and 17 wounded, then revised the toll to three dead and eight injured.
Franco counted seven injured students as of Saturday, September 19, along with three dead including the shooter. Eight students were wounded, four of them critically, according to Palencia and the DSWD. Tamayo, speaking early on, put it at three killed and six hurt.
A man appeared in a video posted on Facebook carrying away from the school what looked like a wounded child. Another video captured a teacher speaking in a local dialect who said two shooters were involved, and a student who insisted the attackers came from outside the school; a single gunman is what official accounts have described.
Marcos Orders an Investigation
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered an investigation the same day, focused on the weapon.
“I also ordered a thorough investigation into today’s shooting, including how a minor obtained a gun,” Marcos said.
Tamayo said he was awaiting a police progress report and told reporters he would release the police findings once he had them. Speaking about gun owners, the governor said they “must make sure that minors do not have access to them.”
School administrators, municipal officials and police are working with the Department of Education to reconstruct events, the department said, declaring itself deeply concerned. It urged the public to stay calm and avoid circulating unverified information.
Classes at all levels across the municipality of Banga were suspended, the Banga Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office said.
Third Shooting Since June
Friday’s bloodshed was the third deadly school shooting in the Philippines since June, in a country where such attacks had previously been rare.
In the June attack at a public high school in Tacloban, at least three students died and roughly 20 more were hurt after two classmates opened fire. Two suspects, aged 14 and 15, were arrested, and investigators believed the attack was driven by a grudge over bullying.
A Senate investigation into the June Tacloban school shooting examined the role of the so-called True Crime Community, which police cybercrime officials characterize as a web-based circle where young users pass around and consume violent extremist material. The Banga line of inquiry follows that investigation.
Thai police said much the same about the teenager accused of killing nine people at a school outside Bangkok in August, telling reporters he had watched violent content online.
On August 18, a student at Ateneo de Zamboanga University in Zamboanga City streamed the attack he was carrying out on Facebook. He pointed a gun at a teacher, but it jammed before firing, and people fled into another classroom. He cleared the jam, fired into that room and killed a Grade 10 student, then killed himself. Twenty-three others were hurt, all but one of them while fleeing or from panic attacks.
Gun ownership in the Philippines is tightly regulated, with buyers subject to background checks and psychological evaluations, yet unlicensed weapons circulate widely. The national police have estimated that hundreds of thousands of firearms in civilian hands carry expired licenses or none at all.
