Spanish police investigate reported sighting of Madeleine

POLICE in Spain are investigating a reported sighting of missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann.

On Tuesday two women reported seeing a youngster matching Madeleine’s description with a man at a petrol station near Cartagena, in the south-east of the country.

The women told police the child had been holding the man’s hand, and that when he felt he was being watched he led her quickly into the car and drove off.

No details about the car or the man have been released by authorities to avoid compromising the investigation.

The Spanish National Police and Civil Guard are co-operating on the case and have carried out a series of interviews with potential witnesses.

It is now 113 days since Madeleine vanished from her bed in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz in Portugal.

Numerous sightings of Madeleine have been reported across Europe and north Africa, including in Belgium, Malta and Morocco.

There has also been speculation that she is dead.

A spokesman for the Find Madeleine campaign said they do not comment on reported sightings.

But Madeleine’s father Gerry McCann earlier said there was a “very real possibility” his daughter was in Spain.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We very much wish we could have said that Madeleine is in one specific area and it is just a question of finding her.

“But it goes back to the initial night. She was certainly moved. There’s been an extensive search around Praia da Luz with no evidence of finding her and it’s very close to the Spanish border.

“It’s about 90 minutes’ drive away, so if the perpetrator had a car waiting she could easily have been moved to Spain.”

Mr McCann said there has been a lot of “wild speculation” about the circumstances of Madeleine’s disappearance.

“Ultimately, and this is the most difficult thing for Kate and I, we don’t know who’s taken Madeleine, we don’t know what their motive is and we don’t know where she is,” he said.

Meanwhile, Portuguese police are still waiting for key DNA test results on blood specks found by British sniffer dogs on the wall of Madeleine’s bedroom in the holiday flat.

A spokeswoman for the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham, which is analysing the samples, said the tests were “ongoing”.

Preliminary testing has revealed the blood probably came from a man from north-eastern Europe, The Times reported last week.

Unconfirmed reports this week said the investigation was at a “decisive phase”, with police poised to launch fresh searches in the Algarve.