Human rights group Amnesty International has identified a new “killing field” in the Philippines ahead of a United Nations vote this week on a mandate to investigate deaths during the country’s brutal three-year drugs war.

Thousands of suspected drug dealers and users have been gunned down by masked assassins or by the police since Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippine president, instigated a violent crackdown when he came into office in 2016. He recently indicated that the second half of his term will be deadlier.

The new Amnesty report, ‘They just kill: Ongoing extrajudicial executions and other violations in the Philippines’ war on drugs’, claims that extrajudicial killings by the police remain rampant.

Investigators hope it will provide crucial evidence to nudge the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva towards passing a resolution that would initiate a year-long investigation in the Philippines by UN special rapporteurs. The vote is expected to take place on Thursday.

The “scale of abuses reaches the threshold of crimes against humanity,” claims Amnesty, alleging that the police have operated with total impunity as they murder people from poor neighbourhoods whose names have appeared on manufactured “drug watch lists” with no legal basis.