A suicide bomber on Tuesday rammed a bomb-laden car into a police station in the Somali town of Afgoye, killing at least four police officers.
Local authorities said that after the attack, militants stormed the area.
“Many militants have entered the town. Heavy fighting is taking place,” police major Nur Osman told Reuters.
Afgoye is about 30 kilometres southwest of the capital Mogadishu.
The al Shabaab militant group, which has been carrying out a series of deadly bombings throughout Somalia, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The group is fighting to topple the Western-backed government in Mogadishu.
“Now most of the town is under our control,” al Shabaab’s military operations spokesman, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab said.
In August, more than 20 persons were killed when suicide bombers from the militant al Shabaab group detonated two car bombs at a local government headquarters in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region.
Residents of the town of Galkayo in north central Somalia said they heard two loud blasts in quick succession followed by heavy gunfire.
“There were two huge bombs. The first one was a truck bomb, followed a minute or so (later) by another car bomb. My brother was injured at the scene,” Halima Ismail, a local resident, told Reuters.