The vice-president of the Philippines has hired a hitman to kill the country’s president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, his wife and the speaker of the house, in the event she is assassinated.

Describing how she contracted an assassin as a kind of insurance policy for her own protection, Sara Duterte said: “I’ve given my order. ‘If I die, don’t stop until you’ve killed them.’ And he said, ‘yes’.”

She insisted the warning was not a joke.

Ms Duterte’s brazen public threat signals just how deep the rift has become between the two leaders of the island nation after their landslide election victory in 2022.

She is the daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, a firebrand politician whose anti-drugs crackdown ended in the deaths of thousands of people.

The International Criminal Court is investigating whether those actions amount to possible crimes against humanity.