A prominent lawyer and legal advisor of Myanmar's ruling party was shot dead along with a taxi driver outside Yangon's international airport on Sunday, officials said.
Ko Ni, a member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, was gunned down as he was waiting for a taxi outside arrivals around 5pm (1030GMT) by an assassin who also killed the driver.
"According to our initial information, Ko Ni and the taxi driver were killed," a security source at the airport told AFP, asking not to be named. The driver tried to stop the assassin who tried to flee from the scene after close-shooting Ko Ni with a 9 mm pistol.
"An unknown man shot him in the head while he was hiring a taxi. He was later arrested," the source added.
Zaw Htay, a spokesman at the president's office, said Ko Ni had just returned from a government delegation trip to Indonesia.
"He (Ko Ni) was shot while he was waiting for a car outside the airport. Ko Ni died on the spot," he told AFP.
There were no reports on possible motives behind the murder.
Yet it is rare for prominent political figures to be murdered in Yangon, the country's booming and largely safe commercial hub.
But in recent years Myanmar has witnessed a surge of anti-Muslim sentiment, fanned by hardline Buddhist nationalists.
Ko Ni, a long time member of the NLD and legal advisor to the party, often spoke out in favour of religious tolerance and pluralism. He was known for his legal advices to amend the country's 2008 Constitution which prohibits NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming the country's president.
In late 2015 Suu Kyi's NLD party won a landslide election victory, ending decades of military led rule.
(With report from AFP)
