MOTOR SPORT/DIGEST:France has warned organisers of the Dakar rally against holding stages in Mauritania after four French tourists were killed there last month, a French government spokesman, Laurent Wauquiez, said yesterday.

Three attackers, suspected by authorities to be linked to al-Qaeda, shot four French tourists and injured a fifth as they enjoyed a Christmas Eve picnic by the roadside in the south of the country, near the border with Senegal.

Gunmen killed three soldiers three days later in the remote and sparsely populated north of the country, bordering Algeria and Morocco's breakaway territory of Western Sahara.

France has since advised its citizens not to travel to Mauritania because of "the terrorist risk".