Crackdown kills 13 suspects and arrested 100 more

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug empire crackdown led to the bloody bloodshed of 13 people who get killed by the police, under the drug suspect, 13 of them being gunned down and arrested more than 100 suspected dealers and criminals in 24 hours of raids in a province with a record of bloody crackdowns.

The suspects were killed in gun battles with police in a city and eight towns in Bulacan province just north of Manila, said police Senior Superintendent Romeo Caramat Jr. More than 70 raids were launched in Bulacan on Wednesday, leading to the arrests of 109 people, including 92 suspected drug dealers and users, he said.

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The latest violence raises the death toll in President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug crackdown to 4,239 since it was launched in July 2016, with more than 131,500 others arrested. Governments led by the United States and the EU have expressed alarm and called on the Philippines to take a sideline to halt the bloodshed.

Mr. Duterte has strike out at critics and declared last week that the Philippines was backing out of the International Criminal Court, where President Rodrigo Duterte complained about the killings, the part of the crackdown.

In the raids, police seized more than 250 small packets of methamphetamine, marijuana and 19 firearms, including a rifle and a shotgun, police said. A similar crackdown in the province had occurred in August left 32 alleged drug offenders dead in the highest single-day toll in the nearly two years of the crackdown.
Last month, Bulacan police killed 10 drug suspects in a 24-hour sweep.