Mauritania has denied reports that it has located three Spanish aid workers abducted at the weekend, the Spanish government said.
"The Mauritanian authorities have told our ambassador that it is not true that the aid workers had been found," a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Madrid said.
Mauritanian security sources said earlier that their armed forces had located the two men and one woman kidnapped last Sunday.
The Spanish government has said it believes al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was involved in the kidnapping of the three, who were distributing computers and other equipment to poor communities for a Barcelona-based aid organisation.
