Portugal searches in Madeleine McCann case to end

Investigators probing the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are to conclude their latest searches after three days scouring scrubland and abandoned structures.

Officers could be seen holding pitchforks as they combed an area on the outskirts of Lagos in Portugal today.

Teams of German and Portuguese police officers, as well as firefighters, used pick-axes and shovels to dig some of the undergrowth.

A digger was also deployed to remove rubble from one of the abandoned structures at the site.

The operation comes 18 years after the three-year-old British girl disappeared from nearby Praia da Luz while on holiday with her family.

The toddler vanished in 2007 after she was left sleeping while her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, went for dinner in a nearby restaurant.

Personnel have spent two days focusing on one particular derelict building, using a ground-penetrating radar on the cobbled ground after clearing the area of debris and vegetation using a digger and chainsaws.

British officers have not been present at the latest searches, London's Metropolitan Police said.

Madeleine's parents are not commenting during the "active police investigation", staff at the Find Madeleine Campaign said.

German authorities requested the search as part of their continued attempts to source evidence to implicate prime suspect Christian Brueckner, who is in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz in 2005.

He is due to be released from jail in September if no further charges are brought.

Last October, Brueckner was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

In 2023, investigators carried out searches near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 50km from Praia da Luz.

Brueckner spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017 and had phoographs and videos of himself near the reservoir.