Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has admitted stabbing someone to death when he was a teenager.

A 16-year-old Mr Duterte stabbed the unnamed individual “over a look”, he said.

“I already killed someone. A real person, a rumble, a stabbing. I was just 16 years old. It was just over a look,” he said.

A spokesman for the controversial President, who has launched a violent offensive against drug gangs in the country, later claimed the comments had been made “in jest”.

But Mr Duterte has previously admitted killing three men while mayor of Davao.

“Bullets from my gun went inside their bodies. It happened and I cannot lie about it,” he said in a statement last December.

Thousands of people have been killed in a nation-wide crackdown on drug users since he took office in June 2016.

Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, Mr Duterte, 72, said he spent his youth “in and out of jail” and would have “rumbles here, rumbles there”.

Filipino protesters burn caricatures of Trump and Duterte prior to the US President's visit

His spokesman told AFP the remarks should not be taken seriously, dismissing the comments as an example of the President's "colourful language”.

Mr Duterte’s hardline drug policy has been widely criticised by the international community but was part of an election campaign promise to reduce crime.

He has dismissed criticism of his adminstration, saying he does not “care about what the human rights guys say”.

“I have a duty to preserve the [next] generation. If it involves human rights, I don’t give a sh*t,” he said.

The 72-year-old President’s latest comments came as he offered to host a “world summit” to explore how nations can protect human rights.

“Let’s have a summit of how we can protect human rights for all human race,” Mr Duterte said shortly after meeting with the Filipino community in Vietnam, where he also renewed his attacks against United Nations human rights expert Agnes Callamard.

“What makes the death of people in the Philippines more important than the rest of the children in the world that were massacred and killed,” he asked.