Philippines: Three people were killed in a shooting during a graduation ceremony at a university in the Philippines capital, Manila, police said on Sunday, including a former mayor of a city in the south of the country.
Remus Medina, the police chief of Quezon City, which falls within the Metropolitan District of Manila, said the shooting appeared to have targeted the assassination of Rose Foregay, the former mayor of the southern city of Lamitan.
Medina told reporters that the suspect, who was injured in an exchange of fire with a university security member, was arrested after a car chase and is now in custody and being interrogated.
He said Foregay was shot as she was about to attend her daughter’s graduation from the Ateneo de Manila University of Law, one of the country’s most prominent universities.
The suspect had no relatives at the graduation ceremony and came from the city of Lamitan in Basilan province, which is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf group that supports the Islamic State and has been known to commit kidnappings and other crimes.
The police indicated that the other two dead were a university security member and another man whose identity has not yet been known.
“We oblige the country’s law enforcement agencies to thoroughly and promptly investigate these killings and hold all those involved to justice,” Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said in a statement.
