President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines confirmed on Friday that he had personally pulled the trigger and killed three people as mayor of Davao City, doubling down on boastful comments he made this week, which loyalists had tried to deny.

“I killed about three of them because there were three of them,” Mr. Duterte told reporters at a news conference in Manila, the capital. “I don’t really know how many bullets from my gun went inside their bodies.”

“It happened. I cannot lie about it,” he said in English.

The remarks followed comments he made on Monday, when he told business leaders that as mayor, he had patrolled the streets on a motorcycle and killed criminal suspects in order to set an example to his police officers.