Residents said artillery shells from both sides rained down on Huriwa, one of two suburbs in north Mogadishu where the U.N.-backed government exercises no control.
“We captured Huriwa district after a joint operation by the government and AMISOM (peacekeepers) this morning” Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for the African Union force, told Reuters.
“We want to push al Shabaab to an area out of mortar range … so that their mortars cannot reach Mogadishu residents,” he said.
Some residents said enclaves within Huriwa remained in the hands of the rebels, but that most was under government control.
The latest wave of fighting in Huriwa and parts of nearby Kaaraan district followed sustained shelling by the rebels in the area last week that killed ten civilians, AMISOM said.
The new offensive comes at a time concerns are growing at the government’s failure to secure control of the entire coastal city after the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group pulled almost all its fighters out of the capital in August.
A suicide bombing on October 7 which killed more than 70 people, al Shabaab’s deadliest strike in Somalia since they launched their insurgency in early 2007, showed the militants were still capable of major attacks.