President Rodrigo Duterte admitted on Monday he was really concerned about the threat of the terrorist ISIS in the country.

In a speech during the mass oath taking of the newly-appointed government officials in Malacañang, Duterte said he kneels down to pray that the country would be spared from ISIS.

"There is the ISIS and this really gives me too much anxiety," he said, citing the media reports about ISIS abroad.

"What I'm really afraid of is just like (what happened) in Iraq, Syria where many innocent people died. I’m praying, I really pray, I really kneel down to God to spare us the kind of brutality and cruelty in our country because it will really be bloody, bloody as it can ever be," he said.

Duterte said this was also the reason he was talking to the group of Nur Misuari, founder of the Moro National Liberation Front.

"We have the MNLF that is the Sulu up to Tawi-Tawi area, Basilan, I am praying to God that Nur Misuari will be enlightened and will be able to accept maybe the same terms that we have extended to (Al Haj) Murad (Ebrahim). That is the only way really without a breakage in our society," he said.

Murad is the leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which forged a comprehensive agreement on the Bangsamoro with the government, paving the way for the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. He is now the interim chief minister of BARMM. Celerina Monte/DMS