Investigators looking in to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are to conclude their latest searches after three days scouring scrubland and abandoned structures, it is understood.
Officers could be seen holding pitchforks as they combed land in an area on the outskirts of Lagos in Portugal on Thursday.
Search teams of German and Portuguese police officers, as well as firefighters, used pick-axes and shovels to dig some of the undergrowth and a digger was again used to remove rubble from one of the abandoned structures at the site.
The operation comes 18 years after three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from nearby Praia da Luz while on holiday with her family in 2007.
The British toddler vanished 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, the Metropolitan Police said.
It is understood officers will conclude the searches on Thursday,
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.
In October last year, 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 30 miles from Praia da Luz.
Brueckner spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017 and had phoographs and videos of himself near the reservoir.
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