COTABATO, Philippines — At least 14 people were killed in a long-seething land dispute involving two Muslim guerrilla commanders and their followers in a southern Philippine town, military and civilian officials said T hursday.

The fighting erupted Wednesday between the two commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in a village in Pagalungan town in Maguindanao del Sur province but a truce has since been forged by the military, police and leaders of the rebel front.

The fighting was set off by a long-running land dispute between the clans of the two rebel commanders and was not directly related to the Muslim insurgency.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front was the largest Muslim separatist armed group in the southern Philippines, homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation, until it signed a peace deal with the government in 2014 when it dropped its separatist goal and agreed to a better-funded Muslim autonomous region called Bangsamoro in the volatile south.

– The Associated Press