Al-Shabaab rebels said they had carried out the bombing. "We were behind the theatre blast," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, the spokesman for al-Shabaab's military operations, told Reuters. "We targeted the infidel ministers and legislators, and they were the casualties of today."
The bomber detonated her explosives as the Somali prime minister, Abdiweli Mohamed Ali, was about to deliver a speech at a ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the start of a national TV station.
Ali Muse, the head of the Mogadishu ambulance service said dozens of people, including Somalia's national planning minister, had been wounded. The blast cut chairs in half, filled the room with smoke and splattered blood across the walls.
A survivor said he feared few people inside the theatre had escaped death or injury. The witness, Zakariye Osman, said he had counted at least eight dead bodies. His clothes were covered in blood as he spoke outside the theatre.
Al-Shabaab militants were largely pushed out of Mogadishu last year by African Union troops, and a period of relative peace descended on the city, allowing sports leagues, restaurants and even a little nightlife to flourish.
Despite those advances, al-Shabab has continued to carry out suicide and roadside bomb attacks, sometimes with devastating effect. Last October, militants detonated a lorry loaded with fuel drums at a government ministry gate, killing more than 100 people.
Somalia's national theatre reopened in March for the first time in 20 years with a concert.
The International Olympic Committee said it was "shocked" by the deaths of the two officials.
"Both men were engaged in improving the lives of Somalian people through sport and we strongly condemn such an act of barbarism. Our thoughts are with the Somalian sporting community who lost two great leaders and with the families of the victims," a statement said.
