Four French holidaymakers, including two children, were robbed and then shot dead while they picnicked at the side of the road in Mauritania local police said today.

Reports from West Africa suggested that the four victims were part of a family and that a fifth member of the family, reported to be the father, is in a critical condition in a local hospital after surviving the attack.

“The family had come from France for a vacation in Mauritania. The government of Mauritania has presented its condolences to France,” said Babah Ould Sidi Abdalla, a spokesman for the Mauritanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

An unnamed official from the French embassy in the desert nation told the French news agency Agence France-Presse that the attack had targeted “five French people, a family”.

“There are four dead, including at least two children. The father was seriously wounded. He has just been taken to the hospital at Aleg where he is receiving treatment," AFP reports the official as saying.

The five were robbed at gunpoint and then sprayed with automatic weapons fire, according to Mohamed Ould Lemine, the police chief of Aleg, a town 150 miles east of Mauritania’s capital, Nouakchott.

According to Mr Lemine, the five had stopped on the side of the highway to have a picnic when the gunmen approached them, demanding money.

The gunmen took their money and then opened fire with automatic weapons. The robbers then sped off in an old model Mercedes Benz.

The identities of the tourists have not been released. An official from France’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the deaths of the four French nationals but was not immediately able to provide any details about the incident.

Mauritania, which lies between Senegal and Mail, is a former French colony.

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