About 40 people, many of them civilians, have been killed in violence in a disputed area on South Sudan's border with Sudan over the weekend and hundreds have sought refuge in a U.N. peacekeepers' compound, a government official said on Monday.Frequent clashes have taken place in Abyei region between rival factions of the Dinka ethnic group because of a dispute over the location of an administrative boundary where significant tax revenue is collected from cross-border trade.