A prominent Muslim lawyer and member 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 legal advisor to Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party, was gunned down as he got into 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.

"An unknown man shot him in the head while he was hiring a taxi. He was later arrested," the source added.

-AFP