Manila, December 16 (RHC)-- Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has boasted that he personally carried out extrajudicial killings while he was the mayor of Davao. 

Speaking to reporters in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, he said: "I’d go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble.  I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill."

President Duterte has long been accused of overseeing death squads in Davao, prompting Human Rights Watch to call him the "death squad mayor." 

As president, he’s launched a brutal so-called war on drugs that has seen thousands of people killed by police and vigilantes since this summer.