At least 14 people have been killed in fresh fighting in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, between government forces and fighters.

Dozens more were wounded as government forces intensified efforts to drive out fighters who have pledged to topple the interim government of Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the Somali president.

At least five of those killed in what was described as intense fighting in the city's Jamhuriya area were civilians, witnesses said.

"I saw the dead bodies of five civilians, one of them a woman," Mohamed Bashir, a resident of the city's Jamhuriya district told the AFP news agency.

"Three of the victims died when a mortar shell struck their house."

Government 'progress'

On Tuesday Somali government forces pushed armed opposition groups out of two districts of Mogadishu after bloody battles, residents and officials said.

Officials said that security forces had also regained control of a police station in the Yaqshid district, north of Mogadishu, from opposition fighters.

Residents reported seeing dozens of bodies in the streets of the city after the fighting, but no confirmed death toll was immediately available.

Fourteen out of Mogadishu's 16 neighbourhoods are now under government control, according to Mohammed Abdi Gandi, Somalia's defence minister.

"That means we are making progress," he said.

But Abdullah Youssef, the secretary-general of Hizbul Islam, an armed group, told Al Jazeera that the opposition forces would regain any ground they had lost.

"If we were the ones who initiated the attack, the fighting would have been next to Mecca street and the presidential palace. But we assure you that they will have to retreat," he said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Civilians ride in a public transport van as they flee from clashes in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, June 2, 2009.

Al-Jazeera