Missing girls police call for curfew on Manchester United shirts

Parents in Cambridgeshire are being urged not to let their children go out to play wearing red Manchester United shirts.

The plea has been made by detectives involved in the search for missing 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Rebecca Chapman who were last seen wearing No 7 Beckham shirts.

Detective Superintendent David Hankins 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 stenciled 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.