Lorenzana to US: Don’t keep bells as war booty

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has called on the United States not to keep the looted Balangiga bells as their trophies from a massacre, saying that returning the bells to the Philippines would redound to a stronger relationship between Manila and Washington.

Lorenzana’s appeal came after Wyoming lawmakers opposed returning the bells taken by American forces as war booty after Filipino revolutionaries attacked US soldiers in Balangiga, Samar, in 1901, killing 48 of them.