Madeleine McCann Portugal search enters third day

Searches for Madeleine McCann resumed on Thursday near to where the three-year-old disappeared from Praia da Luz, Portugal 18 years ago.

German and Portuguese investigators have until Friday to look for evidence relating to her disappearance but there has been no obvious sign of any major discovery so far.

Officers are scouring a 21 sq km (8.1 sq miles) site near where she went missing and where the German investigators' prime suspect, Christian Brückner, had been staying at the time.

The 48-year-old is serving a prison sentence in Germany for an unrelated rape case, however could be released as early as September.

Three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished from an apartment in the Algarve while on holiday with her family in May 2007.

Her disappearance is one of the highest-profile missing person cases in the world.

Madeleine's case was initially handled by the Portuguese authorities with the aid of the Metropolitan Police.

However German police took the lead in 2020 when they identified Brückner as a suspect.

He is known to have spent time in the same part of Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

German police suspect him of murder. British police continue to treat the case as a missing persons investigation.

Brückner has repeatedly denied any involvement and no charges have been brought against him relating to Madeleine's disappearance.

A European warrant has been approved by Portuguese prosecutors to allow German teams to conduct the latest searches on private land.

Diggers and specialist equipment were brought in to help scour scrubland and abandoned buildings on Wednesday.

Searches were last carried near the Barragem do Arade reservoir in 2023 as Brückner had photographs and videos of himself in the area.

On the night Madeleine disappeared, her parents had been at dinner with friends at a restaurant a short walk away while their three-year-old daughter and her younger twin siblings were asleep in the ground-floor apartment.

Last month, Kate and Gerry McCann marked the 18th year anniversary of her disappearance, saying their "determination to leave no stone unturned is unwavering".

However they would not comment during the "active police investigation", staff at the Find Madeleine Campaign said.

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