Seville - A masseur with Team Sky died on Friday, five days after he was taken to hospital suffering from an infection that has also hit three riders in cycling's Tour of Spain, doctors announced.

Txema Gonzalez, 38, died in hospital in the southern Spanish city of Seville.

He had been treated since Sunday for a viral infection that has forced the withdrawal of three Team Sky riders - Spain's Juan Antonio Flecha on Friday and South Africa's John Lee Augustyn and Britain's Ben Swift on Monday.

Team Sky early Friday had "ruled out" food poisoning when it announced that Flecha had been taken to hospital during the night.

Flecha "was admitted during the night to a hospital and remained under observation until 3am (0100 GMT) due to the virus that Team Sky is suffering and which has already forced the withdrawal of John Lee Augustyn and Ben Swift," a spokesman for the team said in a statement.

But the Tour's two official medics, Juan Maria Irigoyen and Txomin Grande, later told reporters that Team Sky's doctor had reported that tests on Gonzalez revealed the presence of a pathogenic bacteria, or one which causes infectious diseases, present in meat, fish and milk products.

The announcement of the death of Gonzalez, just minutes before the conclusion of 7th stage of the Tour, sparked emotional reactions from some participants.

"It's a hard blow, we knew that he was in a critical condition but we didn't imagine it would come to this," the Tour of Spain's director general, Javier Guillen, told Spanish public television.

He said participants would observe a minute's silence before the start of Saturday's 8th stage.