Philippines wants church bells back

Philippines wants church bells back

MANILA (AP): The Philippines will keep pressing to retrieve historic church bells taken by U.S. troops in 1901, President Fidel Ramos said yesterday after failing to work out the relics' return in a U.S. visit.

The bells were taken when American forces counterattacked a group of Filipino guerrillas in the central town of Balangiga. The Philippines was a U.S. commonwealth at the time.

The bells were used in 1901 by Filipino guerrillas to signal an attack on U.S. infantrymen stationed in Balangiga. The attack killed at least 54 Americans.

U.S. troops counterattacked, burning down the town and killing hundreds of people. The troops took the town's church bells and a cannon, which are now displayed at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as a memorial to the soldiers killed in Balangiga.