Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla admitted that the arrest of Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, who has been at large since leaving the Senate on May 14, could trigger a civil war.

Dela Rosa has an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes of humanity in his role as national police chief during the time of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

In a television interview on Monday, Remulla said the arrest of Dela Rosa, who is under the protection of a powerful group in Mindanao, could cause the death of ''300 policemen.''

"He is being protected by a very powerful group there that we are negotiating with so he will be turned over to us. ..., they have a lot of armed men and they are a very powerful group there. Otherwise (if) we go in hard, the body bags will be high. I can order it (armed confrontation) but if it involves the death of 300 policemen, it will be worse than Marawi," he said.

"We do not want a civil war to start because of the arrest of one man. We want to do it properly, we want to do it judiciously, we want to do it cleanly," he added.

Remulla also admitted that it is his mistake that he did not arrest Dela Rosa last May when the lawmaker was still in the Senate in Pasay City.

"For Senator Bato, I dropped the ball—I should have arrested him in the Senate, except there was an agreement back then, a gentleman's agreement that you cannot arrest anyone in the Senate as long as they're in their custody," he said.

"I really regret it... That was my mistake, I was the one who was wrong there; I should have taken him. But that gentleman's agreement? Now there's no such thing, I won't respect that anymore. If you treat us like trash, I will treat you like trash too—not in the sense that I will break any laws, but don't use it as a shield to prevent us from enforcing the law," he added.

Dela Rosa escaped from the Senate premises after a shooting incident transpired around night time of May 13.

Before he escaped, Dela Rosa sought refuge at the Senate after the agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) tried to arrest him based on the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Robina Asido/PHS