Kill drug lords, Philippines’ top cop tells addicts

The Philippines’ police chief has called on drug users to kill traffickers and burn their homes, escalating President Rodrigo Duterte’s deeply controversial crime war that has claimed 2,000 lives.

Dela Rosa was speaking to several hundred drug users who had surrendered in the central Philippines.

Dela Rosa’s comments followed Duterte’s own controversial directives that have sparked criticism from the United Nations and human rights groups.

Duterte, 71, won May elections in a landslide on a vow to kill tens of thousands of suspected criminals in an unprecedented blitz that would eliminate illegal drugs in six months.

He promised on the campaign trial that 100,000 people would be killed and so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that fish would grow fat from feeding on them.

Days after his election win, Duterte also offered security officials bounties for the bodies of drug dealers.

The UN special rapporteur on summary executions, Agnes Callamard, said such directives “amount to incitement to violence and killing, a crime under international law”.

However Dela Rosa and Duterte have insisted they are working within the law and their aides have dismissed some of their comments as merely “hyperbole” meant to scare drug traffickers.