CAIRO: Members of two families in a southern Egyptian village battled with automatic weapons Saturday in a dispute over land, killing four people, police said.

Three brothers of the El-Dor family and one man from the rival Glindi clan died in the fighting in the village of Bani Smea, outside the city of Assiut, 320 kms south of Cairo.

The families were feuding over who would buy a piece of farmland in the village, police said. Security forces surrounded the village and moved in to stop the fighting after the deaths, police said.

Assiut has long been a center of illicit trade in arms and drugs, and feuds between families can turn into years-long cycles of revenge killings. AP