McCann search - police focus attention on drains

British police today were inspecting the sewer and drainage systems alongside the search area on scrubland in Praia da Luz, Lagos.

On the fourth day of the long-awaited search the British police organised themselves into several teams and worked at different points on the scrubland towards the edge of town.

This area had been searched by GNR days after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in 2007 but Scotland Yard have been using geo-radar equipment for a more intensive scan of the stony terrain.

The British investigators have asked for more time to search, they plan to continue all of next week if authorisation is given by their Portuguese hosts.
 
The Judicial Police and local GNR have been patrolling the search area perimeter trying to keep photographers at bay. Tents have been erected in the search area in order to analyse any samples in an undisturbed manner, but no human remains have been found.

Yesterday, vegetation was cut back to make surveying the land easier and today the search was planned to include an unused drainage and sewage system, part of a failed property development project.

Forensic archaeologists also painstakingly began sifting through soil at the bottom of a hidden pit. Sniffer dogs had found the five-foot-by-three-foot hole under wooden planks, corrugated iron sheets and soil 24 hours earlier.

Both police forces stopped work at 18.30 this evening but will be back tomorrow morning and will continue to concentrate on the existing drainage systems, now marked out on the ground by small yellow flags.

The former Portuguese lead investigator into Madeleine McCann's disappearance, Gonçalo Amaral, said that the scenario that Madeleine was murdered and buried on nearby scrubland is “not believable,” a view shared by much of the Portuguese media.

Madeleine McCann disappeared a few days before her fourth birthday on May 3rd, 2007 from the apartment room where she slept with her twin brothers.

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