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The Palace on Saturday addressed the international outcry over President Rodrigo Duterte's statement comparing the killings of drug addicts in the country with Adolf Hitler's extermination of millions of Jews during World War II.

Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella on Saturday sought to parry the international outcry from Duterte's latest controversial remark where he likened the government's drug war to the Holocaust where about six million Jews perished.

“The Philippines recognizes the deep significance of the Jewish experience especially their tragic and painful history. We do not wish to diminish the profound loss of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust, that deep midnight of their story as a people," Abella said in a statement he read during an interview over dzRB radio.

Abella claimed Duterte reference to Hitler's atrocities was an "oblique" deflection on the way he was pictured as a mass murderer and not meant to belittle the murders which the German dictator has committed.

"He likewise draws an oblique conclusion that while the Holocaust was an attempt to exterminate the future generation of Jews, the so-called extrajudicial killings, roundly attributed to him, will nevertheless result in the salvation of the next generation of Filipinos," said Abella.

At least 3,605 people have been killed since law enforcement operations and by vigilantes started on July 1. Emmanuel Tupas/DMS