By Kwasi Kpodo

ACCRA, Nov 2 (Reuters) - A clash between rival clans in Ghana over the planned crowning of a new traditional chief has killed four people and triggered the deployment of hundreds of police and soldiers, the government said on Friday.

The battle over the chieftaincy in the southeastern region of Keta, which has been rumbling on for a decade, degenerated into violence late on Thursday after police and residents said one group began performing rites towards the crowning of a new king.

Protesters from a rival clan turned up at the royal shrine in Keta to block the coronation. Some residents said the security forces then fired into the crowd but police officials said the protesters had opened fire first.

Interior Minister Kwamena Bartels ordered an immediate halt to all customary proceedings relating to the inauguration of a new chief, deployed around 450 extra police officers and 40 soldiers and told them to arrest anyone found with a weapon.

He also imposed a dawn to dusk curfew.

"These directives take immediate effect and anybody who flouts any of them would face the full rigours of the law," Bartels said, adding the curfew would last for one week.

The former British colony has been one of the more stable in turbulent West Africa but there have been sporadic outbursts of violence over chieftaincies, powerful traditional authorities organised largely along tribal and ethnic lines.

A local hospital official who asked not to be named said at least 10 people were seriously injured in the latest fighting.

The most recent serious bloodshed over tribal rivalries in Ghana was in 2002, when at least 40 people were killed over a contested chieftaincy in the northern town of Yendi.

Two government ministers resigned over that unrest and a state of emergency declared after local media said a tribal chief was beheaded and his bodyguards set alight.

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