WATCH extended one-hour highlights from every stage of the 2022 Dakar Rally - January 2-15 (AEDT) - EXCLUSIVE and FREE on SBS and .
The blast, which seriously injured one of the rally competitors, hit a support vehicle belonging to the French team Sodicars soon after it left its hotel in the Saudi city of Jeddah for the race route, according to accounts from the team and race organisers.
Five team members were in the vehicle at the time and one of them - driver Philippe Boutron - sustained serious leg injuries.
French newspaper L'Equipe quoted a team-mate as saying the blast ripped through the floor of the vehicle, which then caught fire.
Race director David Castera told L'Equipe that the two-week race will continue and that he had asked Saudi authorities to assign more police to protect the rally.
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"There's a big police presence," Castera said.
Boutron has now been air-lifted to France and is in a medically induced coma at the Percy Military Hospital, near Paris, with his family at his bedside, his team said in a statement.
News of the blast emerged at the weekend, but at the time rally organisers and the sports governing body said there was no explanation for what had happened.
France's anti-terrorist prosecutors, in a statement issued on Tuesday, said they had launched a preliminary investigation into a terrorism-motivated assassination attempt.
The statement said that the investigation had been entrusted to France's domestic counter-terrorism agency.
The Dakar, now in its 44th edition, started in 1978 as a race from Paris to the Senegalese capital but moved from Africa to South America for safety reasons in 2009.
It has been held entirely in Saudi Arabia since 2020.
