MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Militants briefly overran a police station Monday after violent clashes with police that killed five people, a day after the prime minister began new peace efforts, witnesses said.

The insurgent attack was the latest brazen move by fighters linked to an Islamic extremist group that was driven out in December 2006 by Somalia's Western-backed government and its Ethiopian allies.

Leyla Adow, a Mogadishu resident who said she witnessed the violence, said the police station was briefly overrun.

"Insurgents were firing machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades," she said.

Another witness, Nuradin Haji Madar, said the victims appeared to be three officers, one insurgent and a civilian. "I saw the bodies," she said.

In recent weeks, the insurgents have taken over government positions, marched into towns and even released prisoners from jail before retreating.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein met with elders of the highly influential Hawiye clan in a new bid to push reconciliation. Government and clan officials said the meeting was preliminary and would continue this week.

Somalia has been ravaged by violence and anarchy since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on one another. The current government — formed with U.N. help in 2004 — has struggled to assert any real control.

Last week, Islamic militants here welcomed being added to the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, saying they only wished the designation had come sooner.