Protesters rally in Manila

U.S. crash team expected as protesters rally in Manila

DUMAGUETE, Philippines (Reuters) - A team of U.S. investigators was expected to arrive in the Philippines on Tuesday to probe the cause of a military helicopter crash that killed 10 American special forces soldiers, officials said.

In Manila, about 2,000 leftists burned the U.S. flag and lay an effigy of Uncle Sam in a mock coffin in the biggest anti-U.S. protest in the country since hundreds of American soldiers began arriving last month for military exercises aimed at vanquishing local Muslim guerrillas linked to Saudi militant Osama bin Laden.

Brigadier-General Donald Wurster, special forces chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, told reporters the investigation into Friday's crash of the MH-47 Chinook would take about a month.

The bodies of three soldiers have been recovered; the others are lost and are presumed dead, Wurster said.

The victims were the first casualties in what is viewed as the second front of Washington's stepped-up war against terror.

Some 660 U.S. soldiers are in the southern Philippines to help train the local military to fight Abu Sayyaf guerrillas.

The United States has linked the group to Islamic militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, prime suspects in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

There is some opposition in the Philippines to the deployment, which comes a decade after the government asked the United States to close its military bases in the country. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has, however, shrugged off the criticism.

Hundreds of anti-riot troops guarded the U.S. Embassy in Manila as protesters angrily shouted slogans demanding the withdrawal of American troops from the country.

Setting fire to a giant American flag, the protesters raised their fists and chanted: "U.S. troops out" and "Gloria, U.S. puppet". There was no violence.

"Our president, your president have made a decision to commit U.S. assistance to train, advise and assist Philippine forces to eliminate terrorism in the southern Philippines and to destroy the Abu Sayyaf group...," Wurster told reporters in Dumaguete city on central Negros island, the centre of operations to recover the bodies of missing soldiers.

"As soon as we complete the unfortunate task at hand, we will go straight back to that," he added.

The helicopter was returning to base after ferrying troops and supplies to Basilan island, the Abu Sayyaf stronghold, when it went down.

The Abu Sayyaf has been holding a U.S. missionary couple hostage for nearly nine months on Basilan, a jungle-clad, largely Muslim island about three times the size of Singapore.

Arroyo has said the Americans would not engage in combat but could fire in self-defence if attacked.

Presidential national security adviser Roilo Golez said not all of Basilan was a battle zone and added: "We are not deploying the Americans in the combat zone."

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Caption: U.S. crash team expected as protesters rally in Manila - Protesters burn a U.S. flag near the U.S. embassy in Manila on February 25 to protest against the presence of American troops in the Philippines. REUTERS/Alex de la Rosa