(Corrects Feb. 14 story, after clarification from Yemen embassy, to make clear the diplomat was a consul not ambassador)
Unidentified gunmen hurled a grenade at a school in the Bulo Hubey neighbourhood in south Mogadishu where the party took place, killing one of the guests and wounding two others.
However, Yemeni consul Ali Masud was quickly escorted away by government troops before he was due to deliver a speech.
"Ali Musid attended a ceremony organised by Yemeni diaspora in Mogadishu and while the ceremony was underway a grenade was thrown at the school where the party was happening killing one person and wounding two others," a Somali aide to the embassy, Ahmed Abdi, told Reuters.
"He is safe and is now staying at the embassy."
Somalia's interim government and its Ethiopian military allies are fighting an Islamist insurgency in the lawless Horn of Africa country. A local human rights group said 6,500 civilians were killed in the fighting last year.
Somalia was plunged into chaos when warlords toppled military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
(Reporting by Aweys Yusuf)
SOURCE: Reuters, February 20, 2008