• New searches connected to the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann in 2007 have started.
• According to reports, police were planning to search a remote reservoir in connection with McCann.
• Despite a huge international manhunt, no trace of Madeleine McCann has been found yet.

Investigators in Portugal are carrying out new searches connected to the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann in 2007, German prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The measures are being carried out by Portuguese authorities with the support of German police, prosecutors in Brunswick said in a statement.

Further information was not being given “for tactical investigative reasons”, they said, but prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told AFP a “search operation” was under way.

Portuguese media had on Monday reported that police were planning to search a remote reservoir in connection with McCann, who went missing during a family holiday in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz when she was three years old.

Portuguese television showed an area cordoned off around the Arade reservoir, nearly 50 km from the resort.

Portuguese media reported the police had already combed the site in 2008 but divers found only animal remains.

Despite a huge international manhunt, no trace of Madeleine McCann has been found and no one has been charged over her disappearance.

German prosecutors revealed in June 2020 that they were investigating a German man, Christian Brueckner, in connection with the case, saying they had “concrete evidence” he killed the toddler.

Brueckner, who Portuguese police named as a formal suspect last year, was jailed in Germany for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American in Praia da Luz.

Portuguese weekly magazine Expresso has reported that he would regularly spend time near the reservoir outside the small inland town of Silves.