But at least four civilians were killed before the end of the shooting between gunmen from a powerful alliance of Mogadishu warlords and militiamen backed by the city's influential Islamic courts.
"I can only hear light firing. They have stopped the heavy shellings this morning," resident Farhan Gure told Reuters by telephone. "People fear fighting will start outside the town."
In a message broadcast by radio, clan elders demanded a halt to the shooting and said that if either side broke the truce, they would support the other.
Both sides have massed fighters along the major roads in and out of the coastal capital, and reinforcements kept rolling in to join what is fast becoming an all-or-nothing war for control of the city.
"There is no fighting now. Elders have intervened. But there is no question fighting will resume on these roads," Ali Nur, a militia leader with the warlord coalition, told Reuters by telephone.
Earlier fighting had been confined to northern shanty towns, but by Saturday it had spread across the south of the city and the warlords had moved to block key routes around Mogadishu.
Most of the 148 people killed in eight days of fighting have been civilians.
Analysts view the fighting in the failed Horn of Africa state as a proxy battle between al-Qaeda and the US, which is widely believed to be funding the warlords.