Suicide bombing kills Somali sports officials

The presidents of Somalia's Olympic committee and football federation are among at least six people killed in a suicide attack on the country's newly reopened national theatre. 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." Ali Muse, the head of the ambulance service in the capital, Mogadishu, said dozens of people, including Somalia's national planning minister, had been wounded in the bombing. A survivor of the blasts 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 for the first time in 20 years in March with a concert. Wednesday's ceremony was held to mark the first anniversary of the start of a national TV station.