'If you have them please let them come home'

THE parents of two missing schoolgirls made a desperate televised appeal to their girls’ abductor to release them last night, as British police made their first breakthrough in the case.

In an interview on ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald, Sharon Chapman, mother of Jessica, 10, pleaded: "Just give them back. Drop them off somewhere that is safe... It's never too late... I just want them back."

She said every morning was a recurring nightmare where "when I wake up nothing has changed, where it's the same as yesterday". The girls have now been missing for nine days.