Police fear missing girls abducted Vanessa Allen and Brian Farmer

FEARS were growing last night that two ten-year-old British girls missing since Sunday have been abducted.

A senior detective spoke of his increasing concerns as police released a poignant photograph of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman posing in their Manchester United shirts 90 minutes before they vanished Detective Superintendent David Hankins outlined his fears as a growing search involving more than 250 police failed to find any trace of the youngsters.

“From the outset, we thought this may have been a prank,” said Mr Hankins. “And then we thought there may have been an accident. Now we are having to consider the possibility of abduction.”

Det Supt Hankins said officers had seized a white van which was seen cruising the area on the night the youngsters from Soham, Cambridgeshire, went missing.

The van was seized ten miles from the girls’ homes in Soham.

Asked about the seizure of the van, Det Supt Hankins said: “This is a routine line of inquiry. In an investigation of this nature there will be hundreds of similar lines of inquiry.

“At this stage it is not regarded as significant.”

Det Supt Hankins also asked parents to avoid letting their children go out to play wearing red Manchester United shirts. He said officers were worried about being inundated by reports of children being seen wearing a red Manchester United shirt.

Both Holly and Jessica are Manchester United fans and were wearing distinctive red shirts with the number seven and the name Beckham stencilled on the back when they disappeared on Sunday.

“It would help if parents in the region could avoid letting children go out wearing red Manchester United shirts or similar red T-shirts,” he said.

“What we don’t want is to be side-tracked by people genuinely trying to help by reporting sightings of children wearing such shirts.

“And it would help if children could try to avoid playing on their own in such shirts.”

Police say they have received more than 2,000 calls to their incident room from people offering information about Jessica and Holly.

A woman living on the side of the A10 at Little Thetford reported seeing two girls wearing Manchester United shirts early on Monday.

But police say there has been no corroboration of the sighting despite massive publicity and they do not now think the girls seen by the woman were Jessica and Holly.

They have also followed up a second reported sighting in Little Thetford and a reported sighting in Marsh, Cambridgeshire.

But officers do not believe that either of those sightings were of Jessica and Holly.

British newspapers the Sun and the News of the World are offering stg£150,000 for information on the missing girls.