Mayor Rodrigo Duterte killed by the police on Friday

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, said

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.

The bloody campaign has been criticized by foreign governments, including the United States, as well as by the United Nations and international human rights groups. But it has proved very popular in the Philippines, where residents say the killing of crime suspects has made the streets safer.

According to the police, Mr. Dimaukom, the mayor of Datu Saudi-Ampatuan, a town of about 20,000 on the restive southern island of Mindanao, was killed after his guards opened fire on officers.

Chief Inspector Elias Colonia, a spokesman for the local police, said the authorities had information that Mr. Dimaukom and his group were transporting a shipment of shabu, a cheap form of methamphetamine widely sold in the Philippines.

According to the police, a checkpoint was set up along his expected route in the town of Makilala, about 70 miles east of Datu Saudi-Ampatuan by road. The mayor and his party approached around 4 a.m., Mr. Colonia said.

“The suspects were heavily armed and fired upon the law enforcers, which prompted them to fire back,” according to a police report. “As a result, 10 malefactors were wounded and brought to a hospital for treatment but were declared dead upon arrival.”

Photographs taken at the scene showed various weapons and what appeared to be sachets of shabu near an S.U.V. with bullet holes in the front windshield.

No police officers were harmed, the police said.