President Rodrigo Duterte apologized on Sunday to the Jewish community on his remarks about Adolf Hitler's killing of the millions of Jews and his wish to "slaughter" also the estimated three million drug addicts in the Philippines.

The Chief Executive said it was never his intention to "derogate" the six million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust.

He explained that there were those who were comparing him to Hitler because of his administration's campaign against illegal drugs that resulted to more than 3,000 drug suspects killed.

"The Jewish community reacted all over the world. I would like to make it now, here and now, that there was never an intention on my part to derogate the memory of the six million Jews murdered by the German," he said during the opening of the Masskara Festival in Bacolod City.

"It's not really actually that I fed something wrong. But rather they do not really want you to tinker with the memory...so I apologize profoundly and deeply to the Jewish community. It was never my intention," he stressed, admitting that "there was really a bad taste in the mouth to say it."

Individuals and other international groups condemned Duterte for saying that he would "be happy to slaughter" the three million addicts in the Philippines, recalling how Hitler massacred millions of Jews.

They said that Duterte's rhetoric was deeply offensive and insensitive. Celerina D. Monte/DMS