MOGADISHU, Oct 1 (Reuters) - More than 20 people were killed and 40 injured when two Somali ethnic clans clashed over pasture in an area on the border with Ethiopia, clan-members and Islamist sources said on Sunday.

They said the gunfight between the Saleman and Marehan sub-clans began late on Friday around the border village of Da'dheer, in a 10 km (6 mile) radius in both Somalia and Ethiopia's eastern ethnic Somali Ogaden region.

The area is inhabited by pastoralist communities who often cross the border in search of water and pasture for their animals. Fights over scarce resources have occurred in the area before.

"One clan wanted their animals to graze on the land, but the other did not allow it," Hassan Hashi Mohamed, a member of the Saleman clan told Reuters by phone, after mediating.

He said 12 people from his side had died and 20 had been injured: "(Saturday) was the worst day of the fighting."

Islamists controlling Somalia's nearby central Adado town went to the Somali side of Da'dheer to calm tensions.

"After we heard about the fighting, we tried to get elders from both clans together and we are still holding negotiations," said an Islamist source, who declined to be named.

"We have stopped the fighting from spreading," he said, estimating that 10 people from the Marehan sub-clan had been killed and 21 injured.

Fighting among Somalia's myriad of clans and sub-clans has been common since the 1991 ouster of a dictator ushered in an era of anarchy.

Powerful Islamists, who seized the capital Mogadishu from U.S.-backed warlords in June and now control a swathe of southcentral Somalia, say they are bringing back law and order.

Their territorial expansion has challenged the authority of the Western-backed interim government -- the 14th attempt at effective central rule since 1991 -- flanking the administration, based in a provincial town, on three sides.

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