Madeleine McCann: The Portuguese police in charge of the search declined to comment.
Portugal:
Police deployed heavy equipment and sniffer dogs on Wednesday for the second day of a search at a remote reservoir in Portugal for evidence linking a German suspect to the disappearance of British baby Madeleine McCann 16 years ago.
A remote-controlled tractor-mounted tree cutter was brought in to clear what appeared to be a new search area, a few hundred meters (yards) from a temporary camp set up on Tuesday by Portuguese police on the banks of the Aradé reservoir. , assisted by German and British counterparts.
Dozens of officers focused their search on the shoreline of the reservoir and a hill above, and it was unclear whether they would use divers to search the water.
McCann was three years old in May 2007 when she disappeared from her bedroom in the apartment where her family were staying at the Praia da Luz resort on the Algarve coast. The reservoir is approximately 50 km (30 mi) inland.
expected to close
“I hope they find something so the parents can rest in peace,” said Gert, a 49-year-old Dane who lives in the same building where the McCanns disappeared.
Other Praia da Luz residents and holiday makers expressed hope that Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, would finally have closure.
Rodney, 74, from Manchester, said: “Hopefully this time, unfortunately, they will find some vestiges that will bring closure to the situation. 16 years of uncertainty will be torture.”
Citing a source familiar with the investigation, Portugal’s Expresso newspaper said the German Federal Criminal Police Office acted on secret information from an informant “whom German police consider very reliable” and who provided them with details that investigators ” Taking it very seriously”.
Prosecutor Christian Wolters in Braunschweig, Germany, told broadcaster NDR that the information had not come from the suspect and “there was no confession or anything like that”, and that police were not necessarily looking for McCann’s remains.
“We never said that the girl disappeared from where we were looking for her,” he said.
CNN Portugal said the operation would continue on Thursday for at least one more day.
The Portuguese police in charge of the search declined to comment.
German prosecutors last year named Christian Brueckner as an official suspect in McCann’s disappearance. The convicted child abuser and drug dealer is behind bars in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in the Algarve region in the same area where McCann went missing.
He has denied any involvement in the disappearances.
The McCann case remains a mystery as no bodies have ever been found. This sparked a media frenzy in Britain, with outlets around the world following the development, with celebrities pleading to help find Madeleine.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)