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But in the purchase, the United States also had received control over ancient
Muslim sultanates still angry about the Spanish takeover centuries earlier. More
urgently, it confronted a separate Catholic nationalist rebel movement, led by
Emilio Aguinaldo. War soon erupted between the nationalists and the American
troops stationed in the islands. The outgunned Filipinos adopted guerilla tactics;
the U.S. army responded by rounding peasants into "reconcentration camps"
and declaring entire areas battle zones, in which no distinctions were made
between combatants and civilians. At least 4,200 American and 16,000 Filipino
soldiers are thought to have been killed in the fighting. Historians have debated
the scale of civilian deaths, with estimates ranging from 200,000 to almost 1
million.