Nairobi- Somali gunmen on Thursday shot and killed an aid worker with the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the second in three days, as he distributed aid near Mogadishu, the agency said.

"Unknown gunmen shot and killed him during a food distribution at Daynile, 10 kilometres north-west of Mogadishu," Nairobi-based WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"They then put his body in a WFP vehicle and drove off, shortly before pushing his body from vehicle and driving away," he added.

The 49-year-old Somalia national was the second WFP aid worker to be killed in three days, Smerdon said.

A bloody insurgency, which has claimed the lives of over 10,000 civilians since early 2007, is ongoing in the Horn of Africa nation.

Islamist insurgents are on the verge of taking over the whole country as the government collapses and Ethiopian troops that have been propping up the regime leave.

Aid workers and journalists have increasingly been targeted for murder and kidnap over the last year.

Somalia has been embroiled in chaos since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. (dpa)