Police intensify search for missing schoolgirl

Police in France are intensifying their search for missing British schoolgirl Bunmi Shagaya as the hunt entered its fourth day.

All available police divers are being sent to the scene and groups of officers were set to search surrounding countryside and woodland.

French police officers have admitted that they are no closer to finding the

11-year-old who vanished from the area around a boating lake near Dieppe, during a school trip.

The girl's teachers and fellow pupils are due back in south London today after being questioned in France by police searching for leads on her disappearance.

Richard Morgan, press attache at the British Embassy in Paris, said last night that "they have their hearts set on going home".

"They've all had a very long day and although they were not desperate to leave they felt they could do no more here."

Bunmi's relatives, her mother, two aunts and a cousin, are expected to leave later today after yesterday's emotional visit to the scene of Bunmi's disappearance. Her father was planning to fly from Nigeria to London before making his way out to France.

The Gendarmerie in the northern French town of Cany-Barville are working on two theories. The first is that Bunmi drowned while playing by the lake. It has emerged that she could not swim.

A second theory, police said, was that Bunmi had been abducted from the area of the lake. Police have ruled out a link between a man in his 40s seen naked in his white Transit-style van less than 5km from the lake. He was arrested yesterday but later freed.

It also emerged that a police sniffer dog picked up a scent from the point at which Bunmi's rucksack was found, which led to a play area next to a car park, where the trail stopped. The rucksack contained a wet towel, clothes and a pair of shoes.