Bells to be returned to Philippines

The US will return to the Philippines church bells seized by American forces in a bloody campaign more than a century ago, its embassy said Sunday, following a demand by President Rodrigo Duterte.

American forces took three bells from the Catholic church of Balangiga town on the eastern island of Samar in 1901 as booty in what historians said was a particularly brutal military operation in the new US colony.

Duterte and previous Philippine governments had urged Washington to return the bells, with the president often raising the issue in his anti-American tirades.

The US had initially given a non-committal response to Duterte’s demands, but on Sunday said it would return the bells.