McCanns: Media coverage could "potentially damage and destroy" investigation

The parents of Madeleine McCann have hit out at the coverage of the latest developments in the probe into the disappearance of their missing daughter, as Scotland Yard detectives arrived in Portugal to meet with their counterparts.

Search teams are expected to start excavating a number of sites in Praia da Luz, where Madeleine — then aged three — went missing on May 3, 2007, after they were given permission by Portuguese authorities.

But it is believed that a request to search the homes of three men suspected of a number of break-ins before the child’s disappearance has been turned down.