President Duterte rejects Hitler comparisons he made in a speech

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte should not be compared to Adolf Hitler, his spokesman said on Saturday as his incendiary remarks sparked anger.

Duterte's comments on Friday that he "would be happy to slaughter" three million drug addicts, and his comment that Hitler "massacred three million Jews", were "two entirely different things," Ernesto Abella said in an unapologetic statement.

"The president's reference to the slaughter was an oblique deflection of the way he has been pictured as a mass murderer, a Hitler, a label he rejects.

"He likewise draws an oblique conclusion, that while the Holocaust was an attempt to exterminate the future generations of Jews, the so-called 'extra-judicial killings', wrongly attributed to him, will nevertheless result in the salvation of the next generation of Filipinos."

The controversial 71-year-old president appeared to compare himself to the Nazi leader in his comments, adding that he had been portrayed by critics as "a cousin of Hitler."

"If Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have..." he said, pointing to himself.

More than 3,100 people have been killed since "Duterte Harry", as he has been called, took office at the end of June this year, as part of a drugs war he promised during his election campaign.

Duterte's Hitler comments provoked shock and anger among Jewish groups in the US, who are pressuring Washington to take a harder stance against the unpredictable leader of a dependable US ally.

Abella said: "The (presidential) palace deplores the Hitler allusion of President Duterte's anti-drug war as another crude attempt to vilify the president in the eyes of the world."