Philippines starts active school shooter drills after deadly gun attack

On Wednesday, at one educational campus in Manila, hundreds of students and teachers practised barricading classrooms with desks and chairs and staying silent as an armed actor wearing a black hoodie scoured the halls and rooms.

“We acknowledge the increasing number of violent incidents because of exposure to damaging social media sites, wrong influences and terrorist groups online actively recruiting,” Education Secretary Sonny Angara told reporters.

“We really have to be very creative and adjust to the new activities of perpetrators,” he said, adding that such exercises would be replicated in public schools across the country.

June’s fatal shooting at a high school in the central Visayas region shocked the nation of 113 million, where school shootings and mass violence in educational settings are very uncommon.