NAIROBI, Feb. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- A bomb attached to a motorcycle exploded in Somali capital Mogadishu Thursday morning, killing two"innocent Somalis" and wounding six others, of which three are in very serious condition, a senior Somali official said.

    The motorcycle had been parked outside the former ministry of foreign affairs, and the attack appears to be against an African Union (AU) delegation, which is in Mogadishu to assess the security situation in the Horn of Africa country and scheduled to pass the road in front of the explosion site later Thursday, said the official.

    "Clearly, this was an attempted attack on the AU delegation," said the official, who is based in Kenyan capital Nairobi and declined to be named.

    The explosion, which came just eight days after a journalist from the British Broadcasting Corp. was shot dead in Mogadishu by an unidentified militiaman, attests to the fact that the capital is still not safe enough for the Somali transitional government torelocate from Nairobi to the war-torn country, he said.

    "The Somali transitional government will delay its planned relocation process, but we will try to return as soon as possible," said the official.

    Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Ghedi told a news conferencein Nairobi on Tuesday that the transitional government would have to surmount insecurity before relocating to the war-shattered nation at the end of this month.

    "Security is a serious challenge to the new government which wemust first address before relocating to Somalia," Ghedi told reporters.

    The prime minister last week set February 21 as a tentative date to begin relocation process and he did not mention it at the news conference.

    The African Union, which in January accepted in principle the deployment of African troops in Somalia, bestowed regional Inter-governmental Authority on Development nations with the responsibility of initial troop deployment in Somalia.

    The Somali interim government is deeply internally divided overthe issue, and the parliament has not yet approved any foreign military deployment.

    Various Somali leaders and groups have threatened to oppose such an intervention by force. Thousands of Somalis have taken part in a protest in Mogadishu against the deployment of foreign troops.

    Somalia has been without an effective government since the overthrow of president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Since then, rival warlords have battled for control of the country, and Somalia has been divided into a patchwork of fiefdoms. Enditem