A man has been arrested by French police investigating the disappearance of a nine-year-old girl from a wedding in the French Alps.
Maelys de Araujo was last seen in a play room in the village hall in Chambery, a small town in the Pont-de-Beauvoisin region of southeastern France.
Investigators previously said a "criminal possibility" could not be ruled out.
The 34-year-old man who was detained was a guest at the wedding, the Dauphine Libere newspaper quoted a prosecutor as saying.
He had already been interviewed by police and had given an inconsistent account of his whereabouts on the night Maelys went missing.
Maelys went missing at some point after 3am on Sunday morning.
She was at the wedding with her parents and older sister. Around 250 guests have been interviewed by police.
Around 100 officers, including divers and dog handlers, launched a massive search for the girl, trawling through dense woodland and a nearby river.
Investigators now believe the girl may have been taken in a vehicle after three sniffer dogs tracking her scent lost her trail in the car park outside the village hall in Pont-de-Beauvoisin.
Regional police chief Yves Marzin said: “One of the possible theories is that little Maelys left in a car, one way or another."
Detectives said it was more likely with "each passing hour" Maelys was kidnapped rather than involved in an accident or ran away.
“Given the time that has elapsed since the disappearance of young Maelys and given the resources that have been sadly deployed in vain to find her, the criminal possibility can no longer be ruled out,” local prosecutor Dietlind Baudoin told a news conference yesterday.
But she warned against “making hasty conclusions” in the search for the girl, whose family are believed to be from the nearby department of Jura.
