World
18:51, 17-Aug-2017
Philippine police kill dozens more in Duterte’s war on drugs
["other","The Philippines"]
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Philippine police said on Thursday that they killed at least 26 people in operations in the capital Manila on Wednesday night.
It was the second operation this week in an intensification of President Rodrigo Duterte's fierce war on drugs and crime.
On Monday night, police killed 32 people in Bulacan province, which borders the capital.
The two raids marked the deadliest period of a drugs-focused crackdown that has killed thousands of people since Duterte took office in 2016 and launched his anti-drug campaign
Colonel Erwin Margarejo, spokesman for Manila police, described the raids that started late Wednesday in Manila as "one-time, big-time" operations, the same term used by police in Bulacan, who said the victims died because they chose to put up a fight.
The term has been used by Philippines police to describe a coordinated anti-crime drive in crime-prone districts, usually slums or low-income neighborhoods, often with additional police deployed.
It was however not immediately clear what was behind the step-up in the number of coordinated police operations this week.
According to police reports, a total of 179 people were arrested in Manila and Bulacan. The reports said police launched 84 operations in the two regions, the majority of which were "buy-bust" stings, in which plain-clothes officers attempt to trap drug peddlers.
Manila police chief Oscar Albayalde said there had been no instruction to change or increase the scale and scope of the anti-drugs campaign.
(With inputs from Reuters)