MANILA — After President Rodrigo Duterte publicly named him as a drug suspect last summer, the mayor of a small Philippine town said he was not worried.

“If you are not guilty, why should you be afraid?” the mayor, Samsudin Dimaukom, told The New York Times in August.

On Friday, he and nine other men were shot dead at a highway police checkpoint, in what the police described as an antidrug operation.

Mr. Dimaukom and his companions are among about 2,000 people who have been killed in Mr. Duterte’s campaign against drugs since he took office on June 30.