A senior radio and TV engineer was gunned down in the Somali capital Mogadishu on Saturday, hours after the security forces executed a man previously convicted of killing a journalist.

Ahmed Shariif Hussein working for the state radio and TV was shot dead outside his home in the north of Mogadishu by unknown gunmen armed with pistols, Radio Mogadishu reported.

"Ahmed Sharif was rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead by doctors," said the radio station said.

The gunmen escaped after the attack on the media worker, the sixth killed since the start of the year. Last year, 14 journalists and other media workers were murdered.

The latest killing followed the execution of a suspected Al- Shabaab gunman, who was convicted for the murder of journalist Hassan Yusuf Absuge in 2012.

The execution was the first of its kind in Somalia, where the majority of the assassinations of media workers had gone unpunished before.

Local and international media watchdogs regard Somalia as the second most dangerous place for journalists to operate, next only to Syria, where a civil war is still on.