MANILA: A 16-year-old Philippine athlete died after a week in coma following a boxing match, triggering calls for the sport to be banned in schools, an official said Monday.

Jonas Garcia, a high school athlete, suffered internal bleeding after a boxing match in a regional sports competition and died on Sunday.

Boxing is hugely popular in the Philippines, which has produced many international champions, including Manny Pacquiao, once regarded as the world’s best pound-for-pound fighter.

The death has sparked calls for the suspension of boxing from national school sports competitions, said Tonisito Umali, assistant secretary of the government education department.

“Requests are being made for the suspension of boxing. Other regions are also saying they will not continue boxing,” he said.

“We will not force them,” he said, adding that boxing would still be part of the national sports competition but regional teams will not be forced to send representatives.

Pacquiao, who has parlayed his sporting fame into a massive fortune and election to Congress, had previously expressed sympathy for Garcia but had also said boxing programs for the youth should continue.

“The answer isn’t to cancel boxing. This is where we get fighters for the Olympics. We just have to take the proper precautions,” he told broadcaster ABS-CBN.

Pacquiao, who has won world championships in eight weight divisions, started as a teenage amateur boxer while living on the streets.

Meanwhile, US and Philippine officials signed an agreement Monday for Washington to restore a cemetery north of Manila where the graves of thousands of American service members and dependents have been covered in ash since Mount Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption.

The accord calls for the American Battle Monuments Commission to repair and maintain the Clark Veterans Cemetery for at least 10 years. President Barack Obama had earlier signed a law to finance the Philippine-owned cemetery’s upkeep.

The US Air Force hastily abandoned Clark Air Base, where the cemetery is located, after Mount Pinatubo’s eruption. In 1994, American veterans were shocked to find the 7-hectare (17-acre) cemetery covered in ash and weeds with half of its old steel fence looted. They cleaned up the graves but have since struggled to maintain the cemetery through volunteer work and donations.

Although the cemetery looks tidier today, it is still covered by about a foot (30 cm) of ash, partially burying tombstones and obscuring names, dates and epitaphs.

American veterans, who have been campaigning to prod the U.S. government to take charge of the cemetery’s repair and maintenance, welcomed the agreement, which was signed by U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg and Arnel Casanova, president of Manila’s Bases Conversion and Development Authority,

“This brings to a close a three-year campaign effort to get the U.S. cemetery to be remembered,” said former Navy Capt. Dennis Wright, who saw action in Vietnam and is now a business executive in Clark, which has become a bustling industrial and recreation center.

“We used to call it the cemetery that America forgot,” he said.