More than a dozen gunshots rang out at the GSIS Senate building in Pasay on Wednesday evening Manila time as armed Philippine police and marines moved up the staircases to serve an International Criminal Court arrest warrant on Senator Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa. Journalists in the lobby ran for cover as television crews captured the sound of automatic fire and shouted instructions from inside the building.
The former Davao City police director and Philippine National Police chief under Rodrigo Duterte has been holed up at the Senate complex since the ICC unsealed his arrest warrant on May 11. The court has found reasonable grounds to believe he is responsible for the crime against humanity of murder in connection with the Duterte-era anti-drug campaign that has been the subject of ICC investigation since 2018.
The standoff escalated after the Supreme Court at 3pm declined to issue a temporary restraining order that would have blocked the warrant's execution. Within an hour, agents from the National Bureau of Investigation arrived at the GSIS building and were turned away by Senate sergeant-at-arms staff. By early evening, marines from the Naval Forces had taken up positions outside the building.
Dela Rosa appealed to the Armed Forces in a Facebook video earlier in the day, asking for "peaceful support" and accusing the Marcos administration of "weaponising international institutions against political opposition". The senator, a longtime Duterte loyalist, has framed the ICC case as an extension of the Marcos-Duterte family feud that has dominated Philippine politics since former president Rodrigo Duterte was transferred to The Hague in early 2025.
It was not immediately clear at the time of writing whether any injuries had been reported in the exchange of fire, or who had fired first. Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano, in a statement issued from his office at 7:14pm, said the Senate would "not surrender a sitting senator to any external armed authority without due process" and called for an immediate de-escalation. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The ICC Office of the Prosecutor welcomed the unsealing of the warrant in a Monday statement and reiterated that the court has jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed before the Philippines' 2019 withdrawal from the Rome Statute. The death toll of the Duterte-era anti-drug campaign is contested: the official figure cites approximately 6,250 deaths during police operations, while domestic and international human-rights groups put the total between 12,000 and 30,000 including vigilante killings.
Dela Rosa is the second high-profile Philippine figure to face ICC proceedings. Duterte himself is currently in pre-trial detention at the ICC detention facility in Scheveningen, where the court is preparing to enter a trial-readiness phase later in 2026. Philippine constitutional scholars on Wednesday argued the ICC warrant can be served on a sitting senator without compromising legislative privilege, but Cayetano and the Duterte-aligned bloc of the Senate continued to contest the principle on the chamber floor through the afternoon.