A French motorbike rider competing in the Dakar Rally died on Friday after crashing into a Chilean police car, organisers reported.

Thomas Bourgin, aged 25 from Saint Etienne, was making his way to the start of the seventh stage when he collided with the car coming in the opposite direction.

An inquiry was launched into the precise circumstances of the incident which brings to three the number of deaths in this year’s Dakar.

“The rally’s medical teams deployed on the ground were only able to certify the rider’s death, probably instant,” a statement on the race’s official website reported.

Bourgin was in 68th place in the overall ranking of his first Dakar.

His demise follows that of two people killed in a head-on collision between a Dakar Rally support vehicle and a taxi near Peru’s border with Chile on Thursday.

One of two taxis hit the support vehicle head-on while a second cab overturned as its driver tried to avoid the collision.

Two people in the first taxi, including the driver, were killed and seven people, four of them Peruvian, were injured.

Three of the injured travelling in a Land Rover support vehicle were British members of the Race2Recovery team made up of British and US servicemen who have been severely injured and lost limbs in foreign conflicts.