Fresh searches will start on Tuesday near where Madeleine McCann was last seen in Portugal, after requests from German police.
ITV News understands that Portuguese police will search a location between Praia da Luz and the house where Christian Brueckner, the main and only suspect in the case, lived.
Brueckner is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for the rape of an elderly woman at her home in the Algarve resort town in 2005.
He had denied all the charges against him and any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
The new searches have been called for as part of the Madeleine McCann case, some 18 years after her disappearance in the Algarve.
Madeleine McCann was last seen on May 3, 2007, while on holiday with her parents in Praia da Luz, after they left the then-three-year-old and her younger twin siblings asleep in their apartment while they went out for dinner with friends nearby.
Portuguese police will work alongside German police and prosecutors.
According to CNN Portugal, this new phase of the investigation aims to search for possible traces of the child’s body.
The searches represent the first in Portugal for more than two years, after a week-long operation between Portuguese and German police at a remote dam in 2023, some 40 minutes from Praia da Luz.
Prior to that, the most recent major search in Portugal was back in June 2014. British police were given permission to conduct digs in Praia da Luz with sniffer dogs trained in detecting bodies.
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