Karim Benzema scored twice as Real Madrid overcame the absence of injured Cristiano Ronaldo and suspended Gareth Bale to beat Eibar.

The striker scored from a rebound after Yoel had saved his initial effort and then turned home James Rodriguez's free-kick to double Real's lead.
Benzema set up the third with a cross which Rodriguez slid home over Yoel.
Marco Asensio scored a fourth after Rodriguez's effort hit the post before a late Ruben Pena consolation.
Real briefly went top of the table, but Barcelona's 5-0 win over Celta Vigo later on Saturday restored their one-point lead.
Match ends, Eibar 1, Real Madrid 4.
Second Half ends, Eibar 1, Real Madrid 4.
Attempt missed. Rubén Peña (Eibar) right footed shot from the right side of the box is close, but misses to the right. Assisted by Cristian Rivera.
Foul by Mariano (Real Madrid).
Mauro Dos Santos (Eibar) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Corner,  Real Madrid. Conceded by Anaitz Arbilla.
Substitution, Eibar. Takashi Inui replaces Pedro León.
Attempt missed. Sergi Enrich (Eibar) right footed shot from the right side of the box is close, but misses to the right.
Lucas Vázquez (Real Madrid) wins a free kick on the right wing.
Foul by Anaitz Arbilla (Eibar).
Attempt blocked. Rubén Peña (Eibar) right footed shot from outside the box is blocked.
Foul by Mateo Kovacic (Real Madrid).
Dani García (Eibar) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Offside, Real Madrid. Mariano tries a through ball, but Lucas Vázquez is caught offside.
Corner,  Eibar. Conceded by Nacho.
Dangerous play by Mateo Kovacic (Real Madrid).
Gonzalo Escalante (Eibar) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Offside, Real Madrid. Marco Asensio tries a through ball, but Mariano is caught offside.
Substitution, Real Madrid. Isco replaces James Rodríguez.
Offside, Real Madrid. Nacho tries a through ball, but Mariano is caught offside.
Offside, Real Madrid. James Rodríguez tries a through ball, but Mariano is caught offside.
Attempt missed. Mariano (Real Madrid) header from the centre of the box misses to the right. Assisted by James Rodríguez with a cross following a set piece situation.
Nacho (Real Madrid) wins a free kick on the left wing.
Foul by Ander Capa (Eibar).
Goal!  Eibar 1, Real Madrid 4. Rubén Peña (Eibar) with an attempt from the centre of the box to the bottom right corner. Assisted by Pedro León with a cross.
Substitution, Real Madrid. Mateo Kovacic replaces Luka Modric.
Foul by Sergio Ramos (Real Madrid).
Sergi Enrich (Eibar) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Attempt missed. Pedro León (Eibar) right footed shot from outside the box is too high. Assisted by Ander Capa.
Attempt blocked. Mauro Dos Santos (Eibar) right footed shot from very close range is blocked.
Offside, Eibar. Mauro Dos Santos tries a through ball, but Gonzalo Escalante is caught offside.
Attempt saved. Sergi Enrich (Eibar) header from very close range is saved in the centre of the goal. Assisted by Pedro León with a cross.
Corner,  Eibar. Conceded by Luka Modric.
Offside, Real Madrid. Pepe tries a through ball, but Mariano is caught offside.
James Rodríguez (Real Madrid) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Rubén Peña (Eibar).
Substitution, Real Madrid. Mariano replaces Karim Benzema.
Substitution, Eibar. Cristian Rivera replaces Adrián González.
Nacho (Real Madrid) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.
Foul by Nacho (Real Madrid).


Anti-terror police on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have shot dead one suspected militant and arrested another in the district of Poso, police say.

The suspects allegedly resisted arrest by throwing home-made bombs at the police when they swooped before dawn in the jungle village of Kayamaya.
Two policemen were killed in the area last month while investigating an alleged Islamist training camp.
Poso was notorious for violence between Muslims and Christians a decade ago.
On Wednesday, police killed another suspected militant, arrested two and found explosives in Poso.
Security forces have been battling Islamist militants since the 2002 bombings in Bali which killed 202 people, many of them foreign tourists.


Northampton Town have signed forward Kenji Gorre on loan from Premier League side Swansea City until January 2017.

The 21-year-old has made one first-team appearance for the Swans and spent part of last season on loan at ADO Den Haag.
"He's somebody I looked at a couple of years back and he was at the age where they wanted to keep him," Cobblers boss Rob Page told BBC Radio Northampton.
"We'll have to be patient, he's not the finished article. If he was, he'd be playing in Swansea's first team."
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page.


Syria's al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Nusra Front, has claimed to have captured a number of rebel fighters who were trained by the US.

A statement from the militant group warned others against taking part in "the American project".
Earlier reports said the leader of the so-called Division 30 and other members had been taken but this has been denied by the Pentagon.
On Friday, al-Nusra Front attacked Division 30's base in northern Syria.
Five of the group's fighters were killed and several more wounded in the clashes, Division 30 said in a statement.
Al-Nusra said some of its fighters were killed in US airstrikes against their positions near the city of Aleppo.
Its statement did not say how many Division 30 fighters had been captured, or when they were taken.
Division 30 were trained under a US-led programme to build a moderate force to fight the Islamic State group.
The Syrian conflict began with an uprising against the government, but that has since splintered, pitting rebel groups fighting President Assad's forces against one another.


A student who was diagnosed with leukaemia has found a stem cell donor after a celebrity-backed viral campaign inspired thousands to donate.

Lara Casalotti, from Hampstead, needs a stem cell transplant but her "unique" Thai and Italian heritage meant a mixed-race donor was needed.
Just 3% of worldwide stem cell donors on the register are mixed-race.
Charity Anthony Nolan searched in Italy, Thailand and the US to find a match with a similar ethnic background.
More on this story and other news from London
Lara, 24, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of blood cancer before Christmas. She said the past few months had been a "whirlwind" but she was "so thankful" a donor with a genetic match had now been found.
"I have always stayed hopeful that I would find one, but I realise how lucky I have been given how difficult it was to find that donor," she said.
A campaign to find a donor, called Match4Lara, has gained global attention and led to a sharp rise in the number of people signing up as donors.
Celebrities including Stephen Fry and JK Rowling have also given their support.
The Anthony Nolan charity saw an "unprecedented spike" of new donors from black, Asian, ethnic minority or mixed race (BAME) backgrounds in the UK.
Ann O'Leary, of Anthony Nolan, said: "The life-changing impact of the Match4Lara campaign will be seen for years to come, as any one of the thousands of people they have signed up could save the life of someone like Lara in the future."
Lara, who is studying for a Masters in global migration at University College London, has urged people to sign up to the donor registry so "everyone could find a match".
Lara's mother, Supanya, said: "As a mum, I feel pure relief as we knew the odds were stacked against Lara.
"Whoever the donor is, they will never, ever know how grateful I am."
It is hoped the donor, who remains anonymous, will donate their stem cells in March.
Why do people need stem cell donors?
There are lots of types of blood cancers and disorders which affect the blood, bone marrow and lymphatic system, including Acute Myeloid Leukaemia
A stem cell transplant can cure or improve the outcome for someone with blood cancer or blood disorder
When a person has a blood cancer or blood disorder, their blood cells have stopped working in their normal way. That means they cannot do vital things like fight infection or carry oxygen.
A transplant of blood stem cells from a healthy person can replace and repair these damaged cells - and hopefully cure their disease.
There is a shortage of people of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds on the Anthony Nolan register
Only 60% of transplant recipients receive the best match, but this drops to around 20% of transplant recipients who are from a Black, Asian or ethnic minority background.


More than 20 Nigerian "Chibok girls" who were released by the Islamist group Boko Haram in October have rejoined their families for Christmas.

It is the girls' first return home since they were kidnapped from their school in Chibok in April 2014.
The young women were freed in October after Switzerland and the International Red Cross made a deal with Boko Haram.
Since then, the 21 girls have been held in a secret location for debriefing by the Nigerian government.
One of the girls, Asabe Goni, 22, told Reuters news agency it was a "miracle" that she was home again.
Helping her mother prepare for Christmas, she said she was excited to go to church on Christmas Day.
"I never knew that I would return (home)," she said simply. "I had given up hope of ever going home."
Of the 276 students kidnapped, 197 are still reportedly missing, and negotiations for their release are under way.
Many of the Chibok girls were Christian, but were encouraged to convert to Islam and to marry their kidnappers during their time in captivity.
Ms Goni said some were whipped for refusing to marry, but otherwise they were well treated and fed, until food supplies recently ran short.
After the deal in October, the girls' captors announced that any girl who wanted to be released should line up.
Ms Goni was ill and too exhausted to move as the others scrambled into formation - but she soon learned she would be among the lucky few to leave.
Who are Boko Haram?
Boko Haram 'ousted from forest bastion'
"I was surprised when they announced that my name was on the list," she said.
Her joy was lessened, however, when she was forced to leave behind her cousin Margaret, with whom she had lived since childhood.
The young woman was interviewed at her family's home in the northern city of Yola, surrounded by her father, stepmother, five siblings, and several neighbours.
"Some of the other girls left behind started crying," Ms Goni said. "But the Boko Haram men consoled them, telling them that their turn to go home would come one day."
Before the girls' release, there had only been one confirmed release of a student kidnapped from Chibok.
On 24 December, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari said the army had driven Boko Haram's militants from the last camp in their Sambisa forest stronghold.
"The terrorists are on the run and no longer have a place to hide," Mr Buhari said in a statement.
The army has been engaged for the last few weeks in a major offensive in the forest, a huge former colonial game reserve in north-eastern Borno state.
There has been speculation that some of the Chibok girls are being held in the forest, after it was named by a small number of those who escaped.
Mr Buhari said that efforts to find the remaining girls were being intensified.
The town that lost its girls
Torment of a freed Boko Haram 'bride'


The deadly shooting of four people in the quiet village of Chevaline has dominated press reports across France.

In particular, journalists were asking why it took the forensics team eight hours to reach the crime scene and what the murder motive could be.
Others have noted the British media's fascination with the case.
The brutality of the murders have shocked commentators, with the regional daily Republicain Lorrain calling the case "an extraordinary murder tale".
"The mystery remains complete... in this savage massacre," according to national newspaper Le Monde, which ran a series of online features all aimed at deconstructing the case.
While one story focused on the "grey areas of the murder", another analysed the psychological impact the killings are likely to have on the "miracle girl" who hid beneath the dead bodies for eight hours.
In fact, one of French journalists' main questions was whether police could have discovered the four-year-old much more quickly.
Christophe Cornevin, in Le Figaro, wrote that police had to follow "a very draconian protocol" to preserve the crime scene.
"Firefighters could only count three dead people in the car without being able to touch the bodies", he said. It took another eight hours for the forensics team to arrive from Paris.
The journalist said police were still haunted by the botched murder inquiry of four-year-old Gregory Villemin who was killed in 1984. Valuable traces found at the crime scene were contaminated and the case has still not been resolved.
Veteran journalist Alain Hamon, who specialises in policing and terrorism, argued the Annecy murder highlighted an organisational problem within the French national gendarmerie.
"I blame officials at the highest level," he said. "There is a very important regional forensics team based in Lyon, one hour's drive from Chevaline. Why wasn't it send to at least carry out preliminary investigations?"
Meanwhile, many papers, including national broadsheets, were relying on British press reports to provide more information on the victims' background.
"England is fascinated by this news event", said Le Monde.
"Despite the discretion of prosecutor Eric Maillaud, who refused to formally identify the bodies discovered in Haute-Savoie and confirm whether they were related, the British media has brought out the big guns to identify the victims."
The Mayor of Chevaline, Didier Berthollet, told regional daily Dauphine Libere he was being bombarded with British press enquiries.
"I have received an average of 10 phone calls an hour, and lot of them are from English journalists," he said.
"They don't hesitate to even link the murder to an al-Qaeda or Irish terror attack! I can't provide the slightest bit of information. I am not authorised to attend the crime scene."
Mr Berthollet added that life in the quiet village was slowly picking up again. "People try not to panic, even if they are confronted to many questions."


The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has said it is reviewing plans to award service medals to staff.

It had originally intended to present the medal to all officers and support staff who had served more than three years.
The medals were to be issued to commemorate the first 10 years of the formation of the force.
The cost of going ahead with presenting the medal would have been more than Â£300,000.
Last year, the PSNI confirmed that plans for the medal had been submitted to the Department of Justice for consideration.
But when the anticipated cost of Â£320,000 emerged, the cost of the plan to award the medal became controversial.
Now, in the context of large scale cuts to the policing budget, there has been a rethink.
The PSNI has said it is now reviewing its proposal to award the service medal to police personnel and staff.
A spokesperson for the department of justice said: "The department is aware that PSNI are reviewing the proposal for a medal."


The island nation of Vanuatu is holding snap elections for a new parliament, after half of the ruling coalition's MPs were jailed for corruption.

The 14 MPs had to resign their seats after losing appeals against the convictions in October.
In late November, President Baldwin Lonsdale dissolved parliament when it failed to form a unity government.
But the head of the electoral commission has warned there was not enough time to prepare for the vote.
John Killion Taleo told AFP they were using an electoral roll from July 2015, which was not up to date.
There are concerns that deceased voters have not been removed, and that many young voters who have since turned 18 - the voting age in Vanuatu - will not be able to take part in the polls.
A total of 263 candidates are standing for 53 parliamentary seats.
Former Solomon Islands prime minister Sir Francis Billy Hilly, who is leading a group of foreign election observers, also told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that they faced challenges in flying to remote polling stations.
Air Vanuatu has reportedly cancelled some domestic flights due to engine problems.
Vanuatu has seen political instability in recent years with several changes of prime ministers.
Last year, the 14 MPs were convicted of bribery while the president was abroad.
In his absence, then-parliamentary speaker Marcellino Pipite was the acting president, and he used his powers to pardon himself and the others.
On his return, Mr Lonsdale overturned the pardons. The Supreme Court later ruled the pardons had been unconstitutional.


Rail passengers were switched to an "entirely unsuitable" station when King's Cross could not open because of overrunning  engineering works, a Network Rail chief has admitted.

Robin Gisby told MPs there was no alternative to sending trains to Finsbury Park, on 27 December.
This caused the station to be so crowded passengers could not get off trains and the station had to shut.
But Mr Gisby said he would endorse to make the same decision again.
Speaking to the House of Commons Transport Committee, Mr Gisby said: "Finsbury Park was entirely unsuitable compared with King's Cross but there was nothing else we could do.
"Any other decision would have caused even more discomfort for passengers."
A Network Rail report, published earlier this week, revealed poor planning, equipment failures and communication breakdowns all contributed to the overruns.
Physical work near Paddington was completed on time but safety validation work that should have taken two hours took 10 hours, the report said.
When work near King's Cross overran, the trains were switched to start and finish at Finsbury Park, but "not enough was done" to manage passenger flow at the station.
Network Rail chief executive Mark Carne told the committee he thought the overrun at King's Cross could have been declared earlier and communication about the use of platforms at Finsbury Park could have been improved.
Another inquiry into the overruns has been announced by rail industry body the Rail Delivery Group. This will examine the possibility of moving major engineering projects away from the Christmas period.
The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) has already launched its own inquiry.


Truro City boss Lee Hodges says he is "angry" after his side suffered another second-half collapse as they lost 4-2 at Ebbsfleet in National League South.

Niall Thompson's goal just before half-time made it 1-1 at the break, but the White Tigers conceded three times in 10 minutes to go 4-1 down before Andrew Neal's late consolation goal.
"I'm so angry as I felt we could have seen it out," Hodges told BBC Cornwall.
"It would have been a fantastic performance."
The loss was Truro's fifth game without a win - they have now won just once in their last nine league and cup matches.
City had Durrell Berry making his debut after the former Torquay United full-back signed on non-contract terms as he ups his recovery from a broken ankle.
"The effort was there, the commitment was there, but when that second goal goes in there's a weakness about us and I don't like it," added Hodges,
"I want players to help us and if one misses the ball the next one should get him out of trouble, but at the moment it just seems that once we go under a little bit we're not helping each other out.
"But I've got that fighting spirit, I'll keep going and keep fighting and I want the boys to be with me to keep fighting as well."


Ukrainian security services have thwarted a plot to kill Russian PM Vladimir Putin, Russian officials say.

Two suspects were detained in the Ukrainian port of Odessa, Russia's state-owned Channel One TV reports.
The arrested men were both shown on TV admitting their involvement in the plot, after an explosion at a flat in January in which one suspect died.
A Ukrainian official confirmed to Reuters news agency the arrests were linked to a plot to kill Mr Putin.
When contacted earlier by the BBC, the spokeswoman had initially refused to corroborate the Russian TV report that linked the detention of two men to a conspiracy.
The Russian prime minister's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told the BBC "this was absolutely a plot to kill the prime minister."
The attack was to happen after next Sunday's presidential vote, the report said.
Mr Putin is expected to win the election and get a third term as president.
The BBC's Daniel Sandford in Moscow said the two men were both shown on Russian TV, one being interrogated and the other giving an interview.
In the footage, both admit plotting to attack Mr Putin. One, identified by Ria Novosti as Ilya Pyanzin, said he had been hired by Chechen militant leader Doku Umarov to carry out the killing and also by Ruslan Madayev, the suspect who died in the Odessa explosion.
The other suspect was named by Channel One as Adam Osmayev, said to have been on an international wanted list since 2007.
The plotters were planning to plant mines on Kutuzovsky Avenue in Moscow, used by Mr Putin on a daily basis, the report said.
Russian media report that Mr Pyanzin was arrested in the Odessa flat where the explosion happened. He told police that he and Madayev had flown to Ukraine from the United Arab Emirates via Turkey, with precise instructions from representatives of Doku Umarov.
According to the reports, details of the plot were found on laptops in the flat, along with a video showing Mr Putin's motorcade.
Mr Osmayev was reported to be the local fixer in Odessa and the instructor for the plotters, and had lived for a long time in London.


A North Korean passenger ferry has docked in Russia's far-eastern port of Vladivostok for the first time.

The vessel, called the Mangyongbong, will sail once a week to the port city and will also carry cargo. North Korea is under wide-ranging UN sanctions.
The ferry service comes amid heightened tension between North Korea and the US over Pyongyang's missile tests and efforts to develop a nuclear arsenal.
A Chinese tour operator sent some staff on the inaugural voyage.
The ferry has a restaurant, bars and a karaoke room. Chinese tourists are expected to use the service to visit communist North Korea and Russia.
A Russian firm, InvestStroiTrest, is operating the ferry from the North Korean port of Rajin. The firm runs an import/export business at Rajin, handling freight shipping as far as Vietnam and Thailand.
In 2015 the BBC's Stephen Sackur visited Vladivostok and found many North Koreans employed on building sites, earning much-needed cash for the isolated communist regime in Pyongyang.
Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida has voiced concern to Russia about the new ferry service, noting the UN sanctions imposed on North Korea because of its nuclear programme.
Russia's close economic links with North Korea date back to the Cold War, when they were ideological allies hostile to the West.
Russia's government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta says the Mangyongbong will carry essential goods and other cargo, "which will undergo strict control at Russian customs".
The Mangyongbong was built in 1971 and modernised last year, Russia's Tass news agency reports. It can carry up to 200 passengers and about 1,500 tonnes of cargo.
The UN sanctions on North Korea ban:


The Football Association agreed to back Gianni Infantino's candidacy for the Fifa presidency, at a board meeting on Wednesday.

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Uefa general secretary Infantino, 45, is one of five candidates looking to replace Sepp Blatter on 26 February.
Blatter, 79, announced in June he would resign, amid a corruption scandal at world governing body Fifa.
The FA had supported ex-Uefa president Michel Platini, who in December was banned from football for eight years.
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Both he and Blatter - who was given the same punishment - are appealing.
Fifa's ethics committee found Blatter and Platini had demonstrated an "abusive execution" of their positions over a payment made to Platini in 2011.
Infantino, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, Tokyo Sexwale and Jerome Champagne are vying to replace Blatter, who became Fifa president in 1998.
Switzerland's Infantino and Sheikh Salman of Bahrain are frontrunners to win the election in Zurich.
Speaking on the FA website, chairman Greg Dyke said: "We decided that we would back Gianni Infantino.
"I spoke to every candidate either in person or on the phone.
"We were impressed by Gianni. We were also impressed by Prince Ali but in the end we decided to go with the Uefa candidate."
Last month, Infantino said he intended to include in his manifesto plans for a World Cup to be held in a whole region rather than one or two countries.
Meanwhile, Dyke's proposals to reform the FA were also discussed at the board meeting on Wednesday and will be voted on in May.
Dyke wants to modernise the organisation, but will stand down in the summer at the end of his four-year term because he believes his plans will be strongly opposed.
BBC Radio 5 live sports news correspondent Richard Conway:
"It was widely expected that the FA would back Infantino, but they did get their fingers burnt over Michel Platini - they backed him last summer before they even knew anybody else was in the race.
"This time, they've been a bit more reticent, but good relations with Uefa are important to the FA, and they've gone for the man who stepped into Platini's shoes.
"Infantino's camp are increasingly confident that he's got a good shot at winning the election. Voters are looking at the Swiss technocrat and wondering: 'Is he the safe choice?' Sheikh Salman has allegations hanging over his head that he was complicit in human rights abuses in Bahrain - which he vigorously denies.
"It's going to be a very close vote."


Drivers have been advised to avoid the Whitesands in Dumfries after it was hit by flooding from the River Nith for the second time in a week.

Water has been flowing into the car park but it has not breached the main river wall.
It comes after heavy and persistent rain swept across parts of Dumfries and Galloway.
Earlier in the day 500 homes in Wigtownshire were without power after lightning strikes.
Three separate incidents affected properties in the Lochans and Leswalt areas.
Most homes had been reconnected by mid-morning but problems in some outlying areas took longer to address.
Scottish Power also reported problems with mobile telephone networks in the area.
In Dumfries, police have been moving cars and shopkeepers put down sandbags and flood barriers in front of their doors.
Elsewhere, police said surface water flooding was badly affecting a number of streets in Galashiels town centre.
On the railways a landslip in the Thornhill area closed the line between Kilmarnock and Dumfries.
Dumfries and Galloway had been on stand-by after an amber warning of rain and strong winds was issued for the area.
The A714 north of Newton Stewart was closed for a time and the Bankend Road in Dumfries also shut.
Hazardous conditions have also been reported on stretches of the A75 and A77.
Serious flooding was also being seen in Haugh of Urr on Port Road and Corsehill.


The SNP will not take on administration of Moray Council after exploring possible alliances.

The SNP is the biggest party on the authority, holding 11 out of the 26 council seats after winning two recent by-elections.
The nationalist group has now said it did not have enough support from other councillors to make running the council a viable option.
The Independent and Conservative coalition will remain in charge.


Two first-half goals helped Ross County to three Premiership points as Dundee United's troubles continue.

Liam Boyce's penalty put County in charge in Dingwall before Staggies captain Andrew Davies added another from Jonathan Franks' pass.
Dundee United fought back after the interval through Sean Dillon's drive from outside the box and Blair Spittal hit the crossbar.
But County held on and Jackson Irvine and Franks both had efforts blocked.
The victory for Jim McIntyre's side makes it three league wins in the first month of the season, the first time the Highlanders have hit that mark prior to Christmas in their four seasons in the top flight.
In contrast, the struggling Taysiders have made their worst start to a season in 12 years, with four points from six matches.
Billy McKay went straight into the Dundee United starting line-up after completing his season-long loan from English League One side Wigan Athletic.
The hope was the striker could reproduce the form that saw him score 62 goal in 141 games for Inverness Caley Thistle and compensate for the loss of Nadir Ciftci to Celtic.
That, and the other players who have been sold by the Tannadice club in recent times, clearly still annoys their supporters who let chairman Stephen Thompson know what they thought of him early on.
The travelling fans were unhappy when referee Craig Thomson awarded County a controversial penalty after 17 minutes for handball against Mark Durnan.
It looked as though the former Queen of the South defender was pushed onto the ball by one of the Staggies players, but Thomson thought otherwise.
Boyce celebrated his return to the Northern Ireland squad for next week's Euro 2016 qualifiers by ramming in the spot kick for his fifth goal in the last four matches.
Ryan Dow twice raced clear but the visitors' slack finishing was nothing compared to their poor defending as the Dingwall side moved two goals clear.
Ryan McGowan got back to make a goal-line clearance to deny Franks but from the winger's resulting corner Davies was allowed the space to clip in the Staggies' second after 28 minutes.
United were much more aggressive after the break and Dillon brought them right back into the game with a goal that was as spectacular as it was rare from their captain.
There seemed little threat when he picked up possession 30 yards from goal but the Irishman lashed home a stunning shot for only his sixth strike in eight years at Tannadice.
Spittal then went within the width of the crossbar of levelling the match with a curling free-kick from 25 yards that beat Scott Fox but not the frame of the goal.


It was perhaps a sign of the scale of Labour's defeat that the candidates for the party leadership were asked all about a politician who wasn't here - the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon - and what qualities they shared with her that could make them more successful.

This didn't engender a bout of soul searching about Labour's meltdown in Scotland - instead the candidates swiftly and unsurprisingly turned the question to their advantage.
Yvette Cooper said it was time for Labour to break the glass ceiling and elect a woman leader - unsurprisingly Liz Kendall agreed.
The two women each had different pitches, though - the former had run a big government department, she said, while the latter described herself as "a fresh start".
Andy Burnham saw the SNP's success as evidence that people were fed up with a political elite and he was the man to take his party out of the Westminster bubble.
The most left wing of the candidates - Jeremy Corbyn - preferred the nationalists' anti-austerity message.
He had struggled to gain enough nominations to take part. His supporters said his inclusion would broaden the debate and it certainly did that.
Here in Nuneaton in Middle England - a seat where Labour had lost ground since the last election - he argued strongly against those who said immigration was causing problems with public services.
While the others talked of tougher rules or tougher enforcement he passionately put forward the case that the health service and public transport would be struggling without staff who had immigrated here.
Liz Kendall - who is seen as a Blairite candidate but who describes herself as "today and tomorrow" Labour - also defended immigration but was the only contender to suggest she would consider taking away tax credits from migrant workers.
And the shock of Labour's defeat still hasn't subsided.
The nagging doubt that none of the candidates might be right for the 2020 election led to the question of whether they would resign if things were going badly.
Jeremy Corbyn called for more regular leadership contests - every couple of years - while Yvette Cooper said the candidates shouldn't decide the rules.
Unequivocal answers came from Liz Kendall and Andy Burnham - both said they would go - the latter 'for the good of the party', while the former responded with the jibe that she felt the country should come first.
She claimed she was the candidate the Tories fear most - but the others are arguing that in some ways she is too influenced by the current party of government and that for Labour to broaden its support it doesn't have to move away too dramatically from all its previous policies.


A man has been arrested after a woman was taken hostage, apparently at knifepoint, at a restaurant near Leicester Square in London's West End.

Police with riot shields surrounded the Bella Italia restaurant on Irving Street after the incident was reported at 20:50 GMT.
Parts of the busy tourist area were cordoned off and nearby diners were ordered to stay indoors.
The man was detained soon after 22:45. There were no reports of injuries.
He was seen being led from the restaurant by police and was then driven away.
Officers at the scene said the man had been found with a knife in his pocket.
Jordan Brown, who was playing a gig at Caffe Concerto next door, told the BBC: "All of a sudden the police came around and said 'please can we stop playing'.
"They then kept us inside."
Police have said the incident is not terror-related.


It was the highlight of the 1985 football season - the European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus.

And for almost 40 schoolboys and staff at a Northern Ireland school, it was a day they would never forget.
But 29 May 1985 remains vivid in their minds three decades on for all the wrong reasons.
On the 30th anniversary of the Heysel stadium disaster, two teachers who led a Belfast Boys' Model school trip to the match recall the horror that unfolded before them and how close they came to being caught up in the catastrophe.
Thirty-nine people died, including Patrick Radcliffe who was originally from Bangor in County Down, and 600 others were injured when a wall collapsed on supporters of Italian club Juventus as they tried to escape a surge by Liverpool fans.
The young footballers of Belfast Boys' Model were playing in a tournament in Amsterdam in the Netherlands on the week of the European Cup final, being held in the Belgian capital Brussels.
Many of the boys were Liverpool supporters, and when the agent they were travelling with got 38 tickets for the game the excitement began to build, as teacher Dennis Russell remembers.
"We couldn't believe our luck, it was as simple as that," he says.
"Everybody was jealous, a lot of other kids wanted to go once they heard we were going to the European Cup final.
"Little did we know that 30 years on we'd still be thinking about it."
The group were in sector Z of the stadium. It was here that the concrete retaining wall collapsed as supporters were climbing over to escape the crush.
Andy McMorran, another teacher on the trip, recalls the group's narrow escape as the horrific events unfolded.
"We were very, very lucky," he says.
"One of the other teachers with us said he thought something was going to happen and he was right.
"He got us out a gate at the bottom [of sector Z] to go to another section.
"We had a view of it. The wall [the supporters] were being crushed on all of a sudden collapsed. I likened it to sand running out of a sand-dune - it was horrific.
"That's the one thing that stuck with me - I was watching bodies. It was colours from a distance, but it was actually bodies."
The game was played despite the disaster in order to prevent further disorder, Juventus winning 1-0.
But the danger was not over yet. Tension, anger and hatred between the supporters of both sides had been festering during the game and police feared more trouble would erupt after the final whistle.
"The Italian fans had got to know what had happened, and the concept was that they were going to ambush any Liverpool supporters that they could find," Mr Russell says.
"Terrifying's not the word. I don't know what kicks in, but I suppose it's called self-preservation."
As the group reached their coach, the driver told them to pull the curtains and get on the floor.
The driver refused to stop until they reached the border.
The teachers contacted their loved ones and passed on the pupils' telephone numbers for them to call and reassure their parents that the boys were safe.
It was the only the next day when the group was back in Amsterdam that they realised how lucky they had been to escape unhurt.
As they read newspaper coverage of the disaster, one stark image from the previous night hit home.
"When we were getting in [to the stadium] at the very start there was a block of Italians that weren't letting anybody past as we came up the steps.
"We got to a point where there was a guy who was beating a drum, he actually let us through.
"Unfortunately, one of the photographs of one of the bodies was the guy with the drum. That hit the kids - they realised he had let us through."
For Dennis Russell, the memory of Heysel still remains crystal-clear.
"I saw an article two weeks ago and thought: 'Thirty years ago... good Lord.'
"The boys were brilliant. It was a matter of looking after everybody, and they were tremendous on that night.
"But some of those children I now meet on a regular basis still talk about the fear."


Police seized a "substantial" quantity of drugs in a series of raids across Dundee, Angus and Perthshire.

Officers searched properties in Dundee, Arbroath, Perth and Crieff as part of Operation Slate, an ongoing intelligence-led crackdown on drug related crime in the region.
Class A, B and C drugs were recovered, along with cash, and a number of people were detained.
Det Insp Paul Riley said tackling drug crime was a "top priority".


Part of a Vale of Glamorgan funfair could be torn down after planners said it was built without permission.

Barry Island Pleasure Park owners added the extension to the Treasure Island and Funfair arcade without proper authority, council planners said.
Officers have recommended the planning authority orders an enforcement notice for the building to be to taken down at a meeting to be held on Thursday.
But park owner Henry Danter said: "I think we're within our rights."
If this order is ignored, the council could take legal action.
The extension is about 540 sq m (5,800 sq ft) and described as having "a run-down appearance" while the "quality of workmanship and materials is also questionable, with evidence of some inappropriate repairs".
But Mr Danter, who took over the park in 2015, said: "We're not a prison, we're an amusement park - people can't see through walls. This is our shop front.
"I don't think we need planning permission. If they think this is detrimental to Barry, they must be joking."
The report said officers had visited the site "on several occasions" over the course of more than 12 months.
"No planning application has been made to date despite recent reminders," it added.
It is recommended the enforcement notice is issued, ordering the removal of the building, frame and all associated materials and "restore the land and perimeter wall to their former condition".


When the Israeli authorities staged a major civil defence exercise this month, they did everything they could to make it feel real.

The mournful fluctuation of air-raid sirens echoed across the sunny streets and squares of big cities.
And teachers shepherded well-drilled groups of children briskly down school corridors.
Mock radio news bulletins made no effort to disguise the source of the imaginary attack - it was Hezbollah, the heavily-armed proxy army which Iran equips and maintains in southern Lebanon.
The drill may have been routine but the timing leant it a greater sense of urgency - it came as the US-led world powers built up to the deadline for a diplomatic deal with Iran offering a reduction in crippling economic sanctions in return for a verifiable cap on Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Israeli leaders are worried that those world powers just don't "get" Iran in the way that they do.
Israel is implacably determined to stop the Iranians acquiring a nuclear weapon and sees it without question as the greatest danger facing the Middle East, and perhaps the world.
Read Kevin Connolly: Why Lebanon is pivotal to Iran's regional reach
For a whole variety of reasons they fear that the US-led world powers negotiating with the Iranians don't feel the fear as deeply or the determination quite as adamantly.
Europe, they worry, is too quick to see the replacement of the stridently hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the more emollient Hassan Rouhani as evidence of real political change rather than a simple piece of political window-dressing designed to fool them.
They may be ready to risk making a deal, in the Israeli analysis, to help consolidate a political change that was never really real.
And there's a fear that Barack Obama sees the potential in the rehabilitation of Revolutionary Iran for a kind of personal international legacy - his equivalent of a "Nixon in China" moment.
But above all there's a real and immediate fear that Israel is the likeliest target for an Iranian bomb.
It's worth pointing out of course that Iran denies absolutely that it's attempting to acquire nuclear weapons and insists that its uranium-enrichment programme is intended for peaceful civilian uses, like electricity generation or cancer treatments.
Ronen Bergman, who's one of Israel's best - and best-briefed - writers on defence and intelligence matters, says it's easy to gauge how deep and how real that concern is for ordinary Israelis.
"At the height of the tensions with Iran," he says, "as someone who was seen to know something about this issue, I had people stopping me in the street every day, every hour, asking me not if but when President Ahmadinejad would press the 'red button' once he had a red button to press...
"I don't think he would have, but that's the Israeli mindset, that once the  Iranians get their hands on a nuclear warhead they would launch it at Israel."
Israel is not a party to the talks between Iran and the world powers but it has been working desperately behind the scenes to stiffen the American and European positions, and arguing that a harder bargain could - and should - be driven.
The points of detail are important - should international nuclear inspectors, for example, have the right to make unannounced visits to Iranian military bases and to industrial facilities in remote stretches of desert to ensure that Tehran isn't cheating.
A retired officer from Israel's secret service, Mossad, told us that issues related to Iran take up most of the time and energy of Israel's intelligence services.
That calculation would include not just Iran's nuclear programme but its support for Israel's enemies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza.
So Israel sees Iran as a determined, energetic and dangerous enemy - but not an unstoppable one.
The former Israeli Intelligence Minister, Dan Meridor, believes that the tough current sanctions in place against Iran have been working because they include such tough financial measures as the denial of access to payment systems for international trade.
Iran's goal now is to get those sanctions relaxed or revoked, but Mr Meridor says the US-led negotiators should be careful not to underplay their hand.
"They [the Iranians] are serious and they are smart," he told us, "but they also understand what the Germans used to call Realpolitik.
"When there was heavy pressure on their economy by the European Union and the Americans and others, you saw a change of face and maybe a change of behaviour on the Iranian side. So I don't think we are that weak and I don't think they are that strong.
"If we act smartly we can slow processes and hopefully move things in a better direction."
Israel's many enemies in the Middle East scent hypocrisy in all of this. No-one in the region doubts that the Jewish State itself has had nuclear weapons for years and no-one is fooled by its long-standing policy of simply declining to comment on the issue.
The Israeli case is that Iran is different.
Some Israelis certainly think there's a possibility that the country's religious leaders want The Bomb so that they can carry out their threat to wipe Israel off the map.
But others fear that Iran's ambition is to consolidate itself as a regional superpower - one that no-one will dare to try to push around.
As a revolutionary power it already sees itself as an exporter of revolution - or an exporter of terrorism, as Israel and the United States would see it.
And as the major force in the world of Shia Islam, it feels it has the right to arm and protect Shia communities across the Middle East - as it does in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Israel's nightmare is that those assertive interventionist policies would be a lot more assertive and interventionist if Iran had the extra strategic confidence that comes with The Bomb.
That's why for many years debate on this issue was dominated by speculation that Israel was preparing to launch pre-emptive air strikes against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.
That speculation has receded in the last couple of years - apparently because Israel was prepared to give new, tougher sanctions time to work.
But the intelligence expert Ronen Bergman says that threat remains part of the overall equation.
Israel has already attacked nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 and remains committed to the doctrine articulated by former Prime Minister Menachem Begin that Israel would never allow an enemy committed to its destruction to acquire the means to carry out that threat.
"This is why," says Mr Bergman, "any Israeli prime minister would order the bombers to take off against the Iranian nuclear project if he receives reliable intelligence that Iran is getting too close to a bomb."
Any such attack would trigger an Iranian response - delivered either directly through Iran's own Missile Forces or through Hezbollah on Israel's northern border.
Those recent civil defence exercises in Israeli cities were part of the war-gaming for that "Day After" scenario.
You can find on the internet a startling Israeli-made home movie with disturbingly powerful special effects which portrays an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel - it's called The Last Day.
Israel has to rely on those American-led negotiators to ensure that such an attack remains the stuff of dark and remote fantasy.
But as this process comes down to the wire they remain sceptical and fearful.


Plans to redevelop a former Victorian railway station in Birmingham have been approved by the city council.

The scheme will see Grade I listed Curzon Street station turned into a visitor centre and office space for HS2 and other organisations.
HS2 hopes to use the station as the hub for its high-speed line linking London and Birmingham - although these plans are still being developed.
The conversion is expected to start in November, with completion in 2018.
Conservative councillor Peter Douglas-Osborn said the building had been in a "very sorry state".
"This building has at last come back into use and will be integrated into the HS2 system - and it will be the most beautiful addition to it," he said.
"It's a gem - a treasure for Birmingham but it's also a national treasure."
Historic England and Birmingham City University will also use the building.
HS2 also plans to redevelop a 350 acre (141 hectare) site around the station, which will include shops, offices, a hotel and 2,000 homes, as well as a new seven-platform station.
It said designs for its four stations in phase one of the plans have been put out to tender.
•366,000 sq m of office space
•98,000 sq m of retail
•57,000 sq m of hotel accommodation
•79,000 sq m of community and leisure related uses
•167,000 sq m of residential accommodation (including student accommodation)
Source: Birmingham City Council
Curzon would serve as a hub linking phase one of the high-speed link from London to Birmingham with phase two towards Leeds and Manchester.
HS2 said services between Birmingham and London on the new route would begin in 2026.
Mike Lyons, HS2's programme director said: "It's fitting that we are playing a leading role in restoring the oldest railway terminus in the world whilst simultaneously revolutionising rail travel."


A lost memorial to a dog accidentally shot by a soldier during World War One, could be reinstated in Wiltshire.

An iron cross, marking the dog's grave, was erected by a soldier from the Army Service Corps in Warminster in 1917.
The soldier, according to local historian Danny Howell, was so upset about what he had done he had wanted to give the animal a "fitting memorial".
The grave is no longer visible but to mark the war's centenary Mr Howell wants to find and reinstate it.
During WW1, two camps were set up in Warminster for newly enrolled troops training on nearby Salisbury Plain.
The Army Ordnance Corp (AOC) was one of the units posted there and it was an AOC soldier, according to Mr Howell, who accidentally shot the dog.
"He was on patrol on Copheap in 1917 and probably heard a rustle and fired without thinking," said Mr Howell.
"But he was so upset, he decided to give the dog a proper memorial."
Buried where it had been shot on Copheap, the animal's grave was marked with a small area of concrete and an iron cross.
But in the mid 1980s the cross was vandalised by youths and over the next decade the memorial was lost under dense undergrowth.
"The last time I saw the grave in something of its original glory was in the early 1980s," said Mr Howell.
"Since then soil has slipped down the slope of the hill and covered the concrete slab.
"But I can remember roughly where the grave is, so we won't need to scour the whole hill looking for the exact spot."
With the use of a metal detector, to locate what is left of the iron cross, Mr Howell is hoping to resurrect the landmark in time for next year's 100th anniversary of the start of WW1.
"The loss of a dog's life during the war may seem irrelevant to some and compared with the loss of millions of people's lives in the war it is," he said.
"But we are a nation and town of dog lovers and I think that this project remembers the 'little people' whose lives were cut short."
Copheap is the responsibility of Warminster Town Council.  It was bought for the town in 1947 and the whole area was dedicated as a war memorial three years later.
Heather Abernethie, from the town council, said members had been "intrigued by the request" to reinstate the dog's grave.
"I'd never, ever heard of it [the memorial] before so we need to find some provenance," she said.
"But I am intrigued to find out more and in principal everybody is up for it and I am sure it will get supported."


A 12-year-old boy left with a severe brain injury after he was hit by a car has returned to school after making an "amazing" recovery.

Felix Barrow sustained many broken bones and spent three weeks in a coma when he was knocked over outside his home in Swanmore in October last year.
His parents were told he might never walk again, but they said he has now exceeded all his doctors' expectations.
The family has raised nearly Â£100,000 for the services that saved his life.
Felix was on his way to school when he tripped in the road and was hit by a car as he was getting to his feet.
His mum Vanessa said the accident was "horrific" and added: "You just think this can't be happening to you.
"It was just a normal Wednesday, normal things going on, and your life is turned upside down into an unrecognisable sate where you are thrust into a hospital environment.
"At first I don't think we really realised the extent of his injuries.
"It's been a slow process of learning to do things again, learning to walk, learning to eat, drink normal fluids."
She added that her son has surpassed all expectations and made "amazing" progress.
Felix's dad Stuart said his life was saved by the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance, which flew him to hospital, and the Southampton General Paediatric Intensive Care Unit.
He said: "We wanted to repay them for saving his life. It's been fantastic, the whole community has come together."
The family set up a charity, Fit For Felix, inspired by his love of running and named by his friend Bradley.
It has now raised Â£93,850 by organising a range of activities including fun runs, bike rides, and sponsored swims.


The EU Commission's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier has said he will pay great attention to Ireland during the first phase of negotiations.

Mr Barnier also told reporters he will visit Ireland next week for talks on how Brexit might be implemented.
He was speaking in Brussels after the EU published its Brexit mandate.
Mr Barnier said the guidelines focused on "citizens' rights, the financial settlement and new external borders", including those in Ireland.
He said: "The UK must put a great deal of effort into these three issues into the next weeks and months and that will increase the chances of reaching a deal."
Mr Barnier has already clashed with David Davis, the UK's Brexit secretary, over the "divorce bill" to be paid by the British government when it leaves the EU.
The negotiation guidelines published by the EU stressed the need to avoid creating "a hard border on the island of Ireland, while respecting the integrity of the union legal order".
The guidelines also said that full account should be taken of the fact that "Irish citizens residing in Northern Ireland will continue to enjoy rights as EU citizens".
The document added that any Brexit agreement "should also address issues arising from Ireland's unique geographic situation, including transit of goods (to and from Ireland via the United Kingdom)".


Barnet delivered an EFL Cup upset with victory at League One side Peterborough.

Jean-Louis Akpa-Akpro opened the scoring for the visitors and, despite Gwion Edwards' leveller, Mauro Vilnete and a penalty from former Peterborough striker Shaquile Coulthirst gave the Bees victory.
Barnet started brightly with David Tutonda hitting the post from 25 yards and Coulthirst having a shot saved by home goalkeeper Jonathan Bond.
Akpa-Akpro then found the roof of the net after 22 minutes following a header across goal by ex-Posh player Ricardo Santos.
Edwards levelled after half an hour, firing in low from 25 yards, but a slick passing move nine minutes later ended with Vilhete finding the corner.
The midfielder's free-kick after 58 minutes was then adjudged to have been handled in the wall by Ryan Tafazolli and Coulthirst stepped up to score the penalty, although the ball dribbled in after Bond got a hand to it.
Posh had a good chance to pull a goal back, but Barnet goalkeeper Jamie Stephens turned Tafazolli's header onto the bar.
Report supplied by the Press Association.
Match ends, Peterborough United 1, Barnet 3.
Second Half ends, Peterborough United 1, Barnet 3.
Attempt missed. Marcus Maddison (Peterborough United) left footed shot from outside the box is too high from a direct free kick.
Jack Baldwin (Peterborough United) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Foul by Ruben Bover (Barnet).
Attempt missed. Gwion Edwards (Peterborough United) left footed shot from the right side of the box is close, but misses to the right.
Substitution, Barnet. Charlie Clough replaces Wesley Fonguck because of an injury.
Ryan Tafazolli (Peterborough United) wins a free kick on the left wing.
Foul by Justin Amaluzor (Barnet).
Attempt missed. Ryan Tafazolli (Peterborough United) right footed shot from the right side of the six yard box misses to the right.
Corner,  Peterborough United. Conceded by Elliot Johnson.
Attempt missed. Jack Baldwin (Peterborough United) right footed shot from the right side of the box misses to the left.
Attempt blocked. Ryan Tafazolli (Peterborough United) header from the centre of the box is blocked.
Corner,  Peterborough United. Conceded by David Tutonda.
Leonardo Da Silva Lopes (Peterborough United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Ruben Bover (Barnet).
Attempt missed. Gwion Edwards (Peterborough United) right footed shot from the centre of the box is too high.
Jack Baldwin (Peterborough United) hits the bar with a header from the centre of the box.
Corner,  Peterborough United. Conceded by Ricardo Santos.
Attempt blocked. Ryan Tafazolli (Peterborough United) header from the centre of the box is blocked.
Marcus Maddison (Peterborough United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Ricardo Santos (Barnet).
Attempt saved. Justin Amaluzor (Barnet) left footed shot from the left side of the six yard box is saved in the bottom left corner.
Attempt missed. Andrew Hughes (Peterborough United) header from the centre of the box is close, but misses to the left.
Corner,  Peterborough United. Conceded by David Tutonda.
Andrew Hughes (Peterborough United) wins a free kick in the attacking half.
Foul by Justin Amaluzor (Barnet).
Corner,  Peterborough United. Conceded by David Tutonda.
Attempt blocked. Junior Morias (Peterborough United) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
Corner,  Peterborough United. Conceded by Ricardo Santos.
Attempt blocked. Junior Morias (Peterborough United) right footed shot from the left side of the box is blocked.
Substitution, Peterborough United. Idris Kanu replaces Michael Doughty.
Foul by Marcus Maddison (Peterborough United).
Justin Amaluzor (Barnet) wins a free kick in the defensive half.
Substitution, Peterborough United. Leonardo Da Silva Lopes replaces Alex Penny.
Substitution, Barnet. Justin Amaluzor replaces Shaquile Coulthirst.
Attempt saved. Jean-Louis Akpa-Akpro (Barnet) left footed shot from outside the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Attempt blocked. Ruben Bover (Barnet) right footed shot from a difficult angle on the left is blocked.
Attempt saved. Marcus Maddison (Peterborough United) right footed shot from the right side of the box is saved in the centre of the goal.
Corner,  Barnet. Conceded by Chris Forrester.


Kenya's government has ordered the closure of 13 money transfer firms to prevent militant Islamists from using them to finance attacks, the interior minister has told the BBC.

The bank accounts of 85 individuals and "entities" had also been frozen, Joseph Nkaissery added.
Those targeted include a Somali-linked bus company and hotel.
An assault by the Somalia-headquartered al-Shabab group killed 148 people at Kenya's Garissa University last week.
For the latest news, views and analysis see the BBC Africa Live page.
Kenyan officials have repeatedly accused Somalis in the country of colluding with the militants.
Nearly 500,000 refugees are in the country - many of whom fled decades of conflict and drought in Somalia.
Kenya also has its own Somali population - most of whom live in the capital, Nairobi, and in the north-east, where the university attack took place.
Somalis say most of them are law-abiding citizens of Kenya, and they have also bore the brunt of al-Shabab's insurgency.
They have condemned the government's crackdown as "blanket punishment" of the community.
BBC Africa's Abdullahi Abdi in Nairobi says hotel and transport companies, as well as Muslim clerics and human rights organisations, risk having their bank accounts frozen.
The 85 individuals and entities put on an officially published list had 24 hours to demonstrate why their bank accounts should not be frozen.
They include leading money transfer firm Dahabshill, which has repeatedly denied links with militant Islamists.
The list is headed by Mohamed Kuno, a former Islamic school teacher in Garissa and the alleged mastermind of the university attack.
Al-Shabab in Kenya
Why target Kenya?
Kuno: A man of aliases
Somalis around the world rely heavily on money transfer firms, known as "hawalas", to do business and to send cash to relatives because of the almost non-existent banking sector in Somalia.
There have been a similar crackdown on the companies in the UK and US where the governments have adopted strict money-laundering laws making it difficult for banks to deal with them.
A spokesman for the Somali money transfer agencies in Kenya, Abdi Ali, told the BBC they would oppose moves to shut them down.
"To us, it is only a ministerial directive which is sent to the central bank. We will talk to the Kenyan government about this issue and use its justice system to settle matter," he said.
The United Nations estimates Somalis in the diaspora send home about $1.6bn (Â£1.1bn) annually, significantly more than foreign aid.
More than 40% of Somalis receive remittances, the bulk of which are used for basic needs, including food, clothes, medicine and education, according to a UN survey.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since the fall of Siad Barre's government in 1991, and has been hit by religious and clan conflicts.


A recent conference in Bahrain brought together experts in Islamic archaeology to discuss the lessons of the past and how to safeguard Muslim heritage for future generations.

Under the blistering Bahraini sun archaeologist Salman Al Mahari and his team are excavating a section on the western side of the Al-Khamis mosque site.
With its twin minarets the mosque used to act as a landmark for ships at sea guiding them to land in the 14th century.
But today, excavating the mosque has a far more important function as Islamic archaeology takes on the extremists at their own game.
At a recent conference in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, archaeologists working in over 14 Islamic countries around the world participated in a first of its kind conference.
Islamic Archaeology in Global Perspective brought together some of the most distinguished scholars working in the field of Islamic archaeology to share first hand their recent practical experience in countries torn apart by war, and to investigate the various influences on the science of archaeology.
New Zealander, Alan Walmsley, Professor of Islamic Archaeology and Art at the University of Copenhagen says his investigations aim to disseminate a fuller account of social, cultural, and economic developments in Arab and Islamic history. "I interrogate faded and misinformed historical narratives," he explains.
He begins by unpicking past Western interest in Bilad Al-Sham, an historic region of the Middle East known as Greater Syria.
"Islamic discoveries were incidental to the objective of archaeological interest in Greater Syria," he says."The focus of digs were on the Biblical, Hellenistic and Classical past. These earlier periods took precedence in research."
Animosity between Islam and the West compounded the lack of interest in Muslim remains according to Alastair Northedge, professor at the Universites de Paris 1.
He spoke in the context of his recent trip to Iraq, about the West's overwhelming concerns with their own past. "There is quite a good example in Iraq," he says. "Babylon seems to belong to the West."
Corisande Fenwick, a lecturer in Archaeology of the Mediterranean at University College London (UCL) took time to describe painstaking research into food remains indicating when pork was no longer consumed and so revealing the pace at which Islam was established across the Maghreb region.
She attributes the Western assessment of archaeological finds prior to the mid-1950s to a colonial interpretation.
"If you go back before independence, archaeology is all driven by colonial scholars," she says.
"They were attracted by the exotic nature of their finds. That reinforced the idea that the Islamic world was somehow different and needed to be controlled by colonial powers," she adds.
But it is not just a Western agenda that has shaped excavations in the Muslim world. Alastair Northedge also notes that Muslims themselves have not always been concerned with protecting the material heritage of the great spiritual sanctuaries.
"It is not just Mecca and Medina, but also Shia shrines in Najaf and Karbala in Iraq" he says.
"There seems to be a preference for building something new rather than conserving the old because the emphasis is on the spiritual nature of these places not their materiality."
But a wider vision is coming and the rise in the number of excavations throughout the Gulf area attests to a burgeoning interest in the material past. St John Simpson, archaeologist and senior curator at the British Museum, says that a revival of interest in Islamic archaeology is long overdue.
"It's part and parcel of a search for Muslim cultural identity," he explains. It is also an opportunity to redress earlier misconceptions.
"Since the 19th century and continuing though much of the 20th century commercial excavations led by dealers have in parts of the world flooded the market with objects which were traditionally celebrated by art historians," Dr Simpson says. "They celebrated the beauty of those pieces and therefore reconstructed material cultures on the basis of those objects."
This world of appreciation driven by beauty is the natural perspective of art historians who rate aesthetics over function. "So metal ware, certain types of glass and glazed ceramics are elevated slightly disproportionately to their real functional value in the past.
"Metal ware, glass and glazed ceramics are more highly rated than pottery, brass or plain glass and unfortunately that gives a rather skewed impression," he says.
This new phase is also putting the spotlight on less well known aspects of the Muslim world. Saudi Arabian archaeologist Saad bin Abdulaziz Al Rashid says the Saudi Authority for Tourism and Heritage is in the process of broadening its scope beyond the Holy Places.
"Dams, wells, springs, fortresses along pilgrim tourist routes are all key to the understanding of the spread of Islam," he says.
"We are maintaining the Islamic cultural identity while ensuring their future sustainability," he asserts.
"These sites are significant not only to Muslims at large, but also to non-Muslim scholars and as part of the archaeological work we are supporting the transference and dissemination of the facts surrounding Islamic history."
Saad in Abdulaziz Al Rashid goes on to cite the rich remains of the Nabataean cities of Al Ula and Mada'n Saleh, the furthest western outpost of the civilisation centred at Petra in Jordan. "These first century tombs are now a tourist attraction." he states.
Meanwhile Alastair Northedge notes that the contemporary, more comprehensive vision of Islam counterbalances the extremist fixation with the time of the Prophet.
"All that millennium and a half of great Islamic civilisation, the golden age, has tended to disappear," he comments. "That means forgetting discoveries in philosophy, science that can tell us so much."
Now educated mainstream Muslims are seeking an intelligent tolerant Islam they can relate to and which is absent from Islamic State (IS) discourse.
Today's archaeologist may cross modern political frontiers shattering paradigms created within borders. A globalised archaeology sees expert working collaboratively in diverse countries across the Muslim world.
St John Simpson says that the British Museum is already working with Iraqi archaeologists to build capacity for a whole new generation.
"For a post-Daesh world where we can dig across Iraq safely, training schemes in southern and northern Iraq are helping prepare archaeologists."
Some Iraqi trainees are currently working in Mosul at a time of conflict making assessments of the archaeology and the damage to cultural property with a view that when peace is restored there can be reconstruction.
Nor far away from the conference taking place in Bahrain's National Theatre, Salman al-Mahari is looking at some newly unearthed tombstones.
"These are the same type of stones found in Shiraz, in south-central, Iran," he confirms. "They reflect the cultural and economic exchange between these two places dating from the 11th centuries and perhaps even earlier."
As well as introducing the notion of globalism to modern Islamic archaeology, the conference holds out the prospect of an objective assessment of current and previous findings that will offer a more balanced and revisionist account of the social history of Islam.


Head coach Warren Gatland warned his Lions they will need to keep their cool in Australia after they emerged unscathed from a "dominant" opening tour win against the Barbarians.

Owen Farrell responded to being punched in the face by Schalk Brits by lashing out at his Saracens club-mate.
We kept our composure and the scoreline reflected our dominance in the end
Brits was lucky to escape with a yellow card in Hong Kong and has been cited.
"Sometimes it is hard when someone lays a punch squarely on the side of your jaw not to react," Gatland said.
"But we are going to emphasise from the start of this tour the importance of keeping our discipline.
"It is a nice reminder that sometimes things happen and you need to take one for the team. If you get whacked and respond, the consequences for the team can be severe.
"We might find a similar situation in Australia if someone is grabbed off the ball and we have to make sure we don't react.
"From our point of view the good thing was that Owen wasn't injured or knocked out.
"I was pleased Brits wasn't sent off, and just given a yellow card. Had they played with 14 men it would have been less of a hit-out for us."
South Africa hooker Brits will appear in front of an independent disciplinary panel on Sunday at 09:00 Hong Kong time (02:00 BST) following the first-half incident.
He later took to Twitter to apologise for his actions, saying: "Lions played very well tonight. Sorry for the over-reaction brother (Owen Farrell), took it too far. Hope you have a great tour."
Gatland, whose men now head to Australia for nine further games culminating in a three-Test series against the Wallabies, declared himself "very pleased" after an eight-try victory against opponents who struggled badly in the oppressive heat and humidity.
Scrum-half Mike Phillips and wing Alex Cuthbert both grabbed a brace of tries, while open-side Justin Tipuric impressed in attack and at the breakdown, and lock Richie Gray and flanker Dan Lydiate both played the full 80 minutes to prove their fitness after recent long lay-offs.
"It was a good run-out, and exactly what we wanted," Gatland added. "It was a lot tougher than the scoreline suggests.
"We probably missed three or four tries when we were guilty of maybe trying to force it, but we kept our composure and the scoreline reflected our dominance in the end.
"It was tough out there. The players said the ball was like a bar of soap, with the humidity and heat.
"There is no-one I was unhappy with in terms of their performance. I thought our control was excellent and our kicking strategy was pretty good. We can't complain.
"It was disappointing to concede a try but going forward, the players who played today have laid down a marker. It was about us putting some foundations in place."
Captain Paul O'Connell described the energy-sapping conditions as "probably the most difficult I have ever played in".
"It was just hard to recover during the game," he added. "You would be huffing and puffing and generally you get a break for a scrum or line-out, but the heart-rate just didn't seem to go down.
"But it is great to have got that game under our belts. We did a lot of good stuff."
Barbarians coach Dai Young, a three-time Lion himself, believes the tourists will go on to beat the Wallabies in the Test series starting in three weeks' time.
"The Lions were very efficient," he said. "I would have thought they will feel there is still room for improvement, but they certainly starved us of possession, both at line-out and scrum.
"We were tackling for large parts of the game, and that was always going to sap our energy, but I thought our commitment was far better than it was against England [when they lost 40-12].
"I expect a Lions [series] victory in Australia - I think they have got too much strength in depth across the board.
"Competition for places is going to be huge, and that is only going to push up the performance levels."


The story of Khaled Sharrouf, one of at least 120 Australians thought to have been fighting with Islamic State in the Middle East, may have come to an end.

The Australian government is trying to verify reports that he has been killed in Syria, along with his friend, Sydney man Mohamed Elomar.
Khaled Sharrouf turned up at Sydney airport in December 2013 with his brother's passport and a plane ticket that would get him out of the country.
Despite being on a security watch list, it took less than two minutes for the convicted militant to clear checkpoints before boarding a plane for Syria to join Islamic State (IS).
Since then, the high school drop-out with a history of petty crime, drug use and mental illness has become the most recognisable of a band of Australian Islamic jihadists fighting in the Middle East.
The two men are among at least 120 Australian citizens the government believes have been fighting with the militant group in the Middle East. The government suspects another 160 are supporting IS in Australia.
Reports of the deaths of the two Sydney men come as the government prepares to table legislation that will strip dual Australian nationals involved with terrorism of their Australian Citizenship.
Convicted some years ago for his role in a terror plot involving targets in Sydney and Melbourne, Sharrouf only came to the public's attention after a series of horrific photos were posted on social media, last year.
The photos showed Sharrouf and Mr Elomar holding up what was described as the severed heads of pro-Syrian government fighters.
One of the photos showed Sharrouf's seven-year-old son holding up a head.
Karen Nettleton, the mother of Sharrouf's wife Tara Nettleton, said in a statement released to the media on Tuesday that a "messenger" had told her that Mr Elomar was dead and her son-in-law was missing and presumed dead.
Syria is a long way from Western Sydney and Sharrouf's troubled early life, but it became a beacon for the father of five.
He was sentenced to four years in prison in 2009 for his role in the 2005 terror plot.
He had been arrested with several others in what was then the largest anti-terror raid in Australian history, code named Operation Pendennis by police.
As part of that investigation, a conversation between Sharrouf and another person was intercepted by police on 21 October 2004, according to court documents. The two men were discussing a television programme they had seen on terrorism.
"Let the people accept that we're this, but we're doing it for a proper cause, you know," Sharrouf told his associate.
Born in Australia in 1981 to Lebanese migrants, Sharrouf was convicted after he tried to steal about 132 batteries and six digital alarm clocks from a Big W store in Sydney's western suburbs. Authorities claimed the stolen goods were to be used in homemade bombs.
His bungled shoplifting - according to court documents he ran away when stopped at the register, with "batteries falling from his pockets" - belied a much more violent character.
Expelled from high school in his mid-teens for attacking another student, he began heavily using LSD, ecstasy and amphetamines, while suffering from severe, chronic schizophrenia that may have influenced his eventual radicalisation.
"He soon took up drugs and became involved in petty criminality and it seems that part of the people he started to mix with introduced to him a very extreme form of radical Islamic religion," former Supreme Court justice Anthony Whealy  told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Mr Whealy presided over the Pendennis terrorism trials.
Sharrouf had a tough childhood, according to psychiatrist Dr Olav Nielssen.
"He was subjected to physical abuse by his father and was affected by his father's desertion of the family during his early teenage years," Dr Nielssen wrote in a 2008 report for the New South Wales Supreme Court.
"There was a history of substance abuse in adolescence that may have contributed to the onset of mental illness," Dr Nielssen said.
At the time of his arrest, Sharrouf was living with his wife Tara and receiving a disability pension from the government. He had worked on and off as a labourer on construction sites but gave that up as a result of his mental illness.
The pair met when they were students at Chester Hill High in Sydney's western suburbs, according to local media reports. Ms Nettleton converted to Islam after her husband re-embraced his family's religion in an attempt to turn his life around.
Released from jail in 2009, Sharrouf began attending the notorious Sydney Al-Risalah prayer centre run by Wissam Haddad. Mr Haddad and Sharrouf soon became friends.
Mr Haddad told ABC that Sharrouf was fulfilling a long-held wish to fight for Islam when he snuck out of Australia in 2013.
"He never wants to come back. He wants nothing to do with Australia," said Mr Haddad.
"He's happy doing what he is and he's hoping to be granted that gift from God to die as a martyr."
In Syria, Sharrouf reportedly worked as a low-level IS battlefield commander. Before this week's reports, there had been other brushes with death, such as when he survived a rocket attack on his car several months ago.
In her media statement, Karen Nettleton said family friends inside Sharrouf's car, "including a mother and children" were killed.
At some stage, Sharrouf's wife and children joined him in Syria, and his daughter, now aged 14, married Mr Elomar.
According to her mother, Ms Nettleton and her five children fear for their lives, and want to return to Australia.
"My daughter made the mistake of a lifetime," said Ms Nettleton senior.
"Today she is a parent alone in a foreign and vicious land looking after a widowed 14-year-old and four other young children. They want to come home."
Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said on Wednesday the family should contact the Australian authorities rather than speak to the media.


Five environmental activists have been arrested after blocking a traffic tunnel at Heathrow in protest at plans for a third runway.

Campaigners from Plane Stupid, a group opposed to expansion at Heathrow, parked a van across both lanes of the tunnel and locked themselves to it.
The Met says they and their vehicles have been removed.
Traffic is still affected and passengers are advised to allow extra time to get to Heathrow.
Updates on this story and more on the BBC London live page.
A Heathrow spokeswoman said the earlier demonstration affected traffic around the central terminal area and terminals 2 and 3.
In a statement on its website, Plane Stupid said: "The government needs to choose: build new runways or stop climate chaos. It's that simple."
The airport's spokeswoman said: "Expansion will keep the capital and the whole of the UK at the heart of the global economy, meet environmental targets and balance the needs of local communities."


Ofsted is to set up a taskforce of inspectors to seek out unregistered schools that are operating outside the law in England.

Chief Inspector of Schools Sir Michael Wilshaw says there is a serious and growing threat to the safety of children.
Inspectors have found three unregistered schools operating in Birmingham in recent weeks.
The government says it is taking robust steps against unregistered schools.
Analysis: From BBC education editor Branwen Jeffreys
Anywhere that offers more than 20 hours a week of teaching is legally obliged to be registered as a school. The three schools inspected by Ofsted had not met this requirement to register.
It is likely the children being sent to some of the centres breaching that threshold are registered as home-educated.
The three places visited by Ofsted at the end of November bring the total of unregistered education centres inspected in recent months to 18.
Of these, the only one to have been named is Bordesley Independent School, in Birmingham, where inspectors found dirty mattresses and a lack of running water.
Ofsted says it found a narrow Islam-focused curriculum in the latest schools it investigated.
In one, conditions were described as unhygienic and filthy, with staff who had not been screened for their suitability to work with children.
Inspectors also found books described as inappropriate, with texts including "misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic material".
In the three Birmingham settings, 94 children were being educated.
Writing formally to the education secretary today, Sir Michael says he believes the number of children in unregistered schools could be far higher.
He warns that Ofsted's work to promote British values is being undermined by the growth of these unregistered schools.
The chief inspector says he is also concerned that some of these education centres have received what could be "confusing and unhelpful" advice from Department for Education officials that they can continue to operate while applying to register.
He says it sends out "entirely the wrong message" and could have the unintended consequence of encouraging others to open such schools.
While most of the places visited by Ofsted so far have been in Muslim communities, inspectors may also turn their attention to similar unregistered tuition centres operated by other groups.
"It will apply across the board, to any religious group whether Muslim group, Jewish group, or Christian group who wants to operate this sort of provision in unsafe accommodation, in unhygienic and filthy accommodation.
"It will apply to all religious groups, I want to make that absolutely clear," Sir Michael told the BBC.
Ofsted says it wants to work with officials to disrupt and close down illegally operating schools and intends to prosecute suspected proprietors.
A Department for Education spokesman said the government had been taking robust steps to tackle unregistered schools and improve safeguarding since 2010.
"This includes being completely clear it is a criminal offence to operate an unregistered independent school.
"We agree with Ofsted that more needs to be done and will be strengthening our communications to potential providers.
"We are also introducing further powers to regulate settings which teach children intensively and to intervene and impose sanctions where there are safety or welfare concerns.
"We are pleased Ofsted has agreed to take forward these prosecutions and we look forward to immediate progress."
Shadow education secretary Lucy Powell said the government had "failed to take swift action" to improve arrangements to close unregistered schools "despite warning after warning".
"The dangerous void in the local oversight of our schools system, created by this government's education policy, is allowing children to end up in harm's way," said Ms Powell.
"That this government appears to be content to allow children to remain in illegal schools where they are at risk of exposure to narrow curriculums, misogynist, homophobic and anti-Semitic material and staff who haven't been cleared to work with children, is truly shocking," she added.
"Every day children remain in such a school is a day too long."
A spokesman for Birmingham City Council said the authority was continuing to work with Ofsted and the DfE "to keep our children safe".
The council welcomed "the focus on this issue which we highlighted earlier this year".
"However, the DfE as the regulatory body needs to use its powers to deal with these places that are denying children a proper education, close them down and ensure those responsible are prosecuted," said the spokesman.
The British Humanist Association said it was glad the problem of unregistered schools, "the majority of which we know are religious, finally seems to be being taken seriously, especially after successive governments have known about them for so long.
"Every year that these schools are either allowed to stay open, or else are able to evade detection, thousands more children are subjected to indoctrination, to abuse, and to an education so limited and blinkered that it can scarcely be described as an education at all."


When Sunil first moved to Singapore, he had trouble finding an apartment.

"I called up several landlords who had listed rooms for rent," Sunil, a Sri Lankan who spent eight years living in the UK, said.
"Things would start out OK, maybe because of my [Western] accent - but the moment they heard my name, they'd blank out. Many said 'sorry, we don't rent to these people', or 'sorry, no room for Indians'."
Sunil, a civil engineer who arrived in 2012, said he was rejected by at least four landlords.
"I told them that Sri Lanka was not India, that I wouldn't eat or cook in the apartment, and that I would be outside all day. But still, they wouldn't offer me a room," he said.
"At that point, I got fed up and decided to only try Indian landlords. I was invited to viewings right away."
Sunil is not alone. A quick glance at online rental listings shows many that include the words: "no Indians, no PRCs [People's Republic of China]", sometimes followed by the word "sorry".
A count on 24 April found that there were more than 160 housing adverts on the website PropertyGuru that clearly stated that the landlord did not wish to rent to Indians and/or mainland Chinese.
The issue appears more common with less expensive properties and on sites where content is posted directly by users, such as Gumtree.
Article 12 of Singapore's constitution says:
(1)  All persons are equal before the law and entitled to the equal protection of the law.
(2)  Except as expressly authorised by this Constitution, there shall be no discrimination against citizens of Singapore on the ground only of religion, race, descent or place of birth in any law or in the appointment to any office or employment under a public authority or in the administration of any law relating to the acquisition, holding or disposition of property or the establishing or carrying on of any trade, business, profession, vocation or employment.
Experts say the article can be used by a citizen against the state, but cannot be relied upon to seek legal redress against another individual or legal entity.
The UN has noted that article 12(2) does not extend its protection to non-citizens of Singapore.
It is not clear how many foreign workers have been affected. However, several expatriates have described experiencing varying levels of discrimination.
One Indian expat said his agent told him that many landlords would refuse to rent to him because "Indians always cook smelly curries". Another Briton of South Asian descent did not experience any direct discrimination, but was warned by his agent that some landlords could be difficult.
It was something I experienced too, albeit indirectly. When I searched for a flat, my housing agent received a phone call from one landlord who was worried that I was from mainland China, presumably after they learned about my Chinese ethnicity.
I listened to them discussing my background for what felt like an agonisingly long time. After she hung up, I asked her if it would reassure the landlord if they knew I was British.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "They may still think you're a PRC who obtained a British passport."
Mathew Mathews, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, says: "There are stereotypes that people have about different immigrant groups and how responsible they are in terms of the upkeep of a rented apartment.
"There are notions of which groups take care of their homes better, and what cooking supposedly leaves permanent smells in the house. People have notions about what would devalue the property."
Charlene, an estate agent, said it was common for landlords to prefer not to rent to tenants from India or mainland China because such tenants "are not people who are house proud".
"Many don't clean weekly, and they do heavy cooking, so dust and oil collect over the months. They may use a lot of spices that release smells people don't like."
There are also fears that those tenants will illegally sublet to others, she said, adding: "Cleanliness and culture is a very strong factor."
Another estate agent made similar points, saying that landlords were less willing to rent to Indian and mainland Chinese tenants as they believed they would not maintain the property well.
Singapore is an ethnically diverse nation, consisting of 74% Chinese, 13% Malay, 9% Indian and 3% from other groups. However, as 90% of Singaporean households own their homes, a significant portion of renters are foreigners.
Immigration has also become a sensitive issue, amid concern over living costs and rising housing prices, which many locals blame on foreigners.
While many landlords appear to be concerned about heavy cooking in their kitchens, tens of thousands of Singaporeans launched an online campaign to "cook a pot of curry" in August 2011.
The campaign was prompted by media reports of a disagreement between a Singaporean Indian family and an immigrant family from China, over the smell of curry from the Indian family's home. Following mediation, the Indian family agreed to cook curry only when the Chinese family were not home.
"At that point in time, there was a sense among people that there was some kind of injustice committed," says Alfian Sa'at, a local playwright who wrote the play Cook a Pot of Curry (pictured) following the incident.
"People felt it seemed as if it was OK for [the foreigners] to somehow reject curry, which a lot of Singaporeans believe is part of Singapore's society, no matter what ethnic background you're from. There was a sense that the government had favouritism towards new immigrants at the expense of native, Singapore-born residents."
However despite the support expressed for the Singaporean Indian family, it appears that both race and nationality remain important to many landlords. "It is likely that people tend to want to rent out only to people of the same race," Mr Sa'at says. "This is a tricky issue, because obviously a lot of landlords are [Singaporean] Chinese."
Eugene Tan, Associate Professor of Law at Singapore Management University, says: "In the current state of ambivalence towards immigration in Singapore, my sense is that race and country of origin have taken on a stronger accent with regards to how landlords may view Indian/PRC tenants."
Singapore's government places a strong emphasis on racial harmony. Studies suggest that there is relatively little racial discrimination in the public sphere, but things can be different in private.
"The Singaporean state has considerably influenced Singaporeans' willingness to work and be alongside those who are racially different," Dr Mathews says. "Singaporeans have learned to accept the realities of living in a multi-racial and multi-religious society. The private sphere, however, is one which the state has not tried to influence."
A landlord's choice of tenants "would probably fall within people's private spheres in terms of who they would choose to come into their home space".
Attitudes to race came to the fore in December, when hundreds of foreign workers from India and South Asia rioted after an Indian national was killed in a bus accident. The incident sparked a strong response on social media - many made comments denouncing foreign workers, although many others also spoke out against racism.
Of course, rental discrimination exists in many countries. A BBC study in October found that several estate agencies in London would refuse to rent to African-Caribbean people at the landlord's request.
However, while the UK has legislation banning discrimination on ethnic or nationality grounds, covering situations including "buying or renting property", Singapore offers fewer legal protections.
"There is no specific anti-discrimination law that can be used by non-citizens," says Prof Tan.
"Even if there is an anti-discrimination law, there is the challenge of proving discriminationâ€¦ Indication of tenant preferences in rental advertisements may not amount to discrimination."
In a statement, PropertyGuru said discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or nationality was "absolutely not" allowed under its guidelines.
"There is a whistle-blowing feature for viewers... to report [content] that may be objectionable or derogatory," it said, and objectionable statements would be removed.
Around 1% of listings on its site contained objectionable content, it added.
The Council for Estate Agencies (CEA), a government body that regulates the real estate agency industry, has guidelines stating that agents should "advise their clients against placing advertisements that are discriminatory, offensive or stereotyped in nature against any particular race, religion or group in society".
In a statement, the CEA and the Ministry of National Development said: "We do not condone racial discrimination. There are advertising guidelines in place.
"Some landlords have explained that they face practical considerations renting out their properties, leading to certain requirements in rental transactions."
The statement added: "The Government will continue educational efforts on the importance of mutual respect to preserve ethnic harmony."
Prof Tan believes that the discrimination will reduce over time.
"With more apartments coming on stream in the next few years, landlords cannot afford to be so choosey," he says.
Sunil also believes that views may change over the decades.
"All the landlords who rejected me were from older generations, but I find I'm not treated differently at work, where the people are younger. I think attitudes are changing, it will just take some time."
Some names have been changed
Helier Cheung's report can also be heard on From Our Own Correspondent


Austria's Constitutional Court has ruled that the state was right to expropriate Adolf Hitler's birthplace, which will be remodelled and used by a disabilities charity.

Former owner Gerlinde Pommer had appealed against parliament's vote in December to seize the property.
The court said expropriation would help ensure that the building, in Braunau am Inn, did not become a neo-Nazi shrine.
The authorities plan to transform it, to erase its associations with Hitler.
The Nazi dictator was born in a rented room on the top floor of the building, near the Austro-German border, on 20 April 1889. He lived there for only a few months.
Mrs Pommer - who does not live there - argued that the building could be transformed without it being seized by the state.
Germany's Spiegel website reports that the Austrian government has been paying the elderly, ailing woman about â‚¬5,000 (Â£4,390; $5,700) a month in rent. Under the expropriation law she will get compensation.
There had been calls for the building to be pulled down to prevent it becoming a shrine for neo-Nazis.
Officials want to remodel the property's facade and offer it to Lebenshilfe, a charity which supports people with learning difficulties.
The building was used by the charity as a day centre and workshop for people with special needs.
But it was forced to move out several years ago when Mrs Pommer blocked renovations.
During Nazi rule, the house was transformed into a shrine to Hitler as the town drew in a wave of tourists.
But as the Nazis began to lose control in 1944, it was boarded up.


A lifeboat crew went to the aid of a surfer after he got into difficulty returning to shore while surfing off Thurso on Thursday.

The surfer had lost his board and swam out further than usual in an area popular with surfers.
Thurso lifeboat crew picked him up after he seeing that he was struggling to swim back to shore with his board in a heavy swell and wintry conditions.
He was checked over by an ambulance crew at Scrabster Harbour.


A man who died in a terror attack near a north London mosque was alive when he was hit by a van, an inquest has heard.

Makram Ali, 51, from Haringey, was hit by the vehicle after leaving a prayer meeting at Muslim Welfare House in Finsbury Park on 19 June.
An inquest at St Pancras Coroner's Court heard that he is believed to have had a "medical episode" shortly before.
Darren Osborne, 47, from Cardiff, has appeared in court charged with murder and attempted murder.
He appeared at the Old Bailey on Tuesday charged with killing Mr Ali and the attempted murder of others at the scene.
Nine other people were injured as a result of the attack.
Detective Inspector Edwin Hall of the Metropolitan Police told the court that the incident was being treated as a terrorist-related murder.
A post-mortem examination found Mr Ali's death was caused by multiple injuries.
According to his family, Mr Ali had suffered some form of collapse due to a weak leg and was "sitting up and expressing a wish to return home" when the attack happened.
His relatives have previously described him as a "quiet, gentle man" who "spent his whole life without any enemies" and who regularly attended the local mosque.
Mr Ali came to the UK from Bangladesh aged 10 and was married with four daughters, two sons and two grandchildren.
The inquest was opened and adjourned by senior coroner for Inner North London Mary Hassell, until any criminal proceedings have finished.


A student at a school in Devon has contracted measles.

In a letter to parents with children at schools and nurseries, Public Health England urged them to ensure children had received both MMR vaccinations.
It said other pupils at King Edward VI Community College in Totnes, Devon, may also have come into contact with the virus.
The Conservative MP for Totnes and a former GP, Sarah Wollaston, has added her supported to the initiative.
She said "relatively low" levels of immunisation in Totnes increased the risk of it spreading.
"It means that many more children are at risk within our community", she said and described it as a "serious and really distressing illness".
Source: NHS
Ms Wollaston has previously appealed for parents in Totnes to vaccinate their children against the virus, saying she believed many parents had rejected the MMR vaccine despite its now discredited links to autism and bowel disease.
"I hope that parents will look carefully at the letter that they've received and have their children immunised," Ms Wollaston said.