Four Somali soldiers and a civilian have been killed after Islamist insurgents attacked a check-point just outside the capital, Mogadishu.
The Islamists briefly took control of the site, burned military vehicles and seized weapons and money, a police officer said.
The Siinka Dheer check-point is on the road to Afgooye, where thousands of Mogadishu residents have fled.
The Islamists have recently staged several attacks outside the capital.
Earlier this week, the US bombed an Islamist-held town in southern Somalia, saying that an al-Qaeda operative was sheltering there.
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Islamists blow up Somali colonel ... aim is to cripple both the military and the economic sources of the enemy and that is why we raided the post," Islamist spokesman Abdi-rahin Isse Adow told the BBC.
The Islamists were ousted from the capital, Mogadishu in December 2006 by government forces, backed up by Ethiopia, with some intelligence from the US.
The US accused the Somali Islamists of harbouring those responsible for the 1998 attacks on its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Islamists denied this, as well as reports they had links to al-Qaeda.
Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991.
Last month, a senior UN official told the BBC that Somalia was the worst place in the world for children.
(BBC)
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