MANILA - President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday lashed out at hired killers, amid the spate of high-profile killings that have gripped the country.

"[These] murder for hire, I hate to say this… You have no value in my eyes,” Duterte said in his Independence Day speech delivered at the balcony of the historic Aguinaldo Shrine in Kawit, Cavite.

"If you go into the business of killing Filipinos, then ang tingin ko sa iyo wala kang balor (then I don't see any value in you)."

Duterte said this amid the recent killings of prosecutors and priests in the country.

Three priests have been killed in the Philippines since December, the latest of whom was Fr. Richmond Nilo of Zaragoza, Nueva Ecija.

Nilo was about to celebrate Mass in a church in Zaragoza Sunday night, when unidentified gunmen shot him dead.

Last December 2017, Fr. Marcelito Paez was also gunned down by unidentified assailants after assisting the release of a political prisoner in the town of Jaen, Nueva Ecija.

Another Catholic priest, in Gattaran town in Cagayan, Fr. Mark Anthony Ventura, was also shot dead in April by an unidentified gunman after celebrating a Mass.

Fr. Rey Urmenta, a former PNP chaplain, survived an ambush in Calamba, Laguna just last week.

The Palace earlier said Duterte may have been alarmed by the recent killings of two prosecutors - Quezon City assistant prosecutor Rogelio Velasco and assistant special prosecutor Madonna Joy Tanyag of the Office of the Ombudsman - when the chief executive announced that he will soon make “radical changes” in the country.

Duterte is a former prosecutor himself.