Philippine leftists reacted with dismay on Wednesday to President Rodrigo Duterte’s threat to create a “death squad” to hunt so-called Maoist assassins, a plan critics said could trigger a spree of killings similar to his bloody war on drugs, Reuters reports. In September, Duterte said there was a plot to unseat him hatched by the opposition, Maoist rebels and a group of former soldiers who had mounted failed coups in the past. Following the statement, Duterte ordered the National Security Council to set up a National Task Force to deal with the country’s nearly half a century old communist-led armed insurgency. It was the first attempt by a sitting Philippine president to take on “the communist insurgency bull by the horns and finally take it down,” writes Rigoberto D. Tiglao for The Manila Times.