Shots heard at Philippine Senate as lawmaker wanted by ICC holds out

Multiple gunshots were heard on Wednesday inside the Philippine Senate, where a senator wanted by the International Criminal Court has sought refuge, AFP journalists said.

The sound of at least five shots sent journalists fleeing for cover, minutes after soldiers with rifles and protective gear went up the stairs of the legislative building, the journalists said.

Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, former president Rodrigo Duterte's chief drug war enforcer, has holed up at the building since Monday and urged the military to stop attempts to arrest and fly him to the Netherlands to stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity.

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"We are under attack," Senate president Alan Peter Cayetano, who is allied to Dela Rosa, later said in a livestream on his Facebook page, without elaborating.

Robin Padilla, a senator also allied with Dela Rosa, was later seen walking up the stairs while urging the journalists to leave the area.

Dela Rosa's whereabouts are not immediately known.

Dela Rosa, better known by his nickname "Bato", earlier Wednesday urged "my fellow men in uniform" and former classmates at the Philippine Military Academy, which produces most of the armed forces' officer corps, to "express their sentiment" that President Ferdinand Marcos's government "should not hand me over to foreigners".

Dela Rosa was police chief in 2016-2018, during Duterte's first two years in office.

The crackdown left thousands dead, human rights monitors say, many of them drug users and low-level narcotics peddlers.

Duterte was arrested in March last year, flown to the Netherlands on the same day, and is detained in the Hague where he awaits trial.

Dela Rosa had not been seen publicly since November before emerging on Monday to take part in an unexpected vote that helped Duterte loyalists capture control of the Senate.