Governor's office tweets NSFW photo

The Delaware governor's office apologized Thursday for a tweet containing a racy photo.

• The Delaware governor's office deleted a tweet with a link to an 'inappropriate' photo


• The governor's staff apologized, saying it was an inadvertent mistake


• "We just wish the accidental link had been a cat video," the office said

(CNN) -- Delaware Gov. Jack Markell's office apologized Thursday for a tweet containing a link to a racy photo of a woman wearing what appears to be leather straps around her neck and chest.

"An inappropriate photo was inadvertently sent out earlier. We are looking into how this occurred but apologize to anyone who was offended," Markell's Twitter account read.

His office deleted the tweet 17 minutes after it was posted, but Politwoops, a website that documents deleted tweets by politicians, captured the original tweet with the link:

"At Warner E.S. in #WilmDE to announce new initiative to support many of #netDE's most disadvantaged students PHOTO: http://ow.ly/i/6M3N"

An inappropriate photo was inadvertantly sent out earlier. We are looking into how this occurred but apologize to anyone who was offended.

— Gov. Jack Markell (@GovernorMarkell) September 4, 2014

Markell's office sent out a longer statement Thursday attempting to clarify the situation. The statement said the link was supposed to be a photo "that had just been uploaded to the internet of the Governor's education announcement."

"While the tweet was being edited, the auto-generated link for the picture was inadvertently altered," the statement continued. "As a result, the picture linked to the tweet was a random, unrelated, and inappropriate picture that has been on the internet since 2010, and not the just-uploaded picture of the event. The tweet was deleted and we apologize for the error."

His office added a touch of humor about the situation.

"The lessons here are not to compose tweets too quickly and there is a lot of odd stuff on the internet," the statement read. "We just wish the accidental link had been a cat video."

Earlier this week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry also apologized for what he described as an "unauthorized" tweet related to his indictment.