MANILA – Senator Leila de Lima appealed for prayers for the thousands who perished in President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs, as the entire nation honored their dead on Tuesday.

The cries of the victims' families are "too loud to ignore," said De Lima, a long-time critic of Duterte's relentless anti-narcotics campaign.

"The deaths of these victims and the agonies of the families they left behind – their widows and orphans – remind us of a fundamental belief that like you, I too am my brother’s keeper; I too am my sister’s keeper," De Lima said.

"As scripture tells us, let us pray for deliverance from fear and intimidation – and from the sins that plague our country," she said.

De Lima was ousted from a Senate committee investigating the President's war on drugs after she presented as witness self-confessed assassin Edgar Matobato in September.

She had led a similar inquiry when she was chairman of the Commission on Human Rights and Duterte was mayor of Davao City.

Duterte, on the other hand, accused De Lima of tolerating illegal drug operations in the national penitentiary and receiving kickbacks during her tenure as justice secretary.

An unfazed De Lima urged the public on Tuesday to "end these killings and allow the mighty stream of the rule of law and justice flow."

"This fight will not be easy because we are up against the idea that it is fine to kill in the name of war against drugs," she said.

De Lima said she was hopeful a planned investigation by United Nations special rapporteur Agnes Callamard would help end the killings.

More than 2,300 drug suspects have been killed in police operations or by suspected vigilantes since Duterte took office on June 30, according to a Reuters report. ABS-CBN’s Investigative and Research Group, meanwhile, put the death toll from May 10 to October 28 at 2,236.