Investigators congratulate themselves as Madeleine McCann searches end

German and Portuguese investigators congratulated and embraced each other as the latest searches connected to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann drew to a close.

Search teams wound down the operation in Atalaia, near Lagos, Portugal, on Thursday, after three days of scouring scrubland and abandoned structures.

Their efforts focused on a 120-acre stretch of land, using equipment such as chainsaws, diggers and a ground-penetrating radar.

The operation comes 18 years after three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from nearby Praia da Luz while on holiday with her family in 2007.

The British girl vanished after she was left sleeping while her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, went for dinner in a nearby restaurant.

Officers involved in the latest searches held a debrief before leaving the site, and there was a round of applause before a crate of German beer was removed from one of the tents in the designated base area.

After the Augustiner beers were carried away, some officers struggled to grapple with the tents they were taking down because of the blustery conditions.

Earlier in the day, personnel could be seen holding pitchforks as they combed stretches of land.

Pick-axes and shovels were used to dig some of the undergrowth and a digger was again used to remove rubble from one of the abandoned structures at the site.

They spent the first two days of the search focusing on one particular derelict building, using ground-penetrating radar on the cobbled ground after clearing the area of debris and vegetation using a digger and chainsaws.

British officers have not been present at the latest searches, the Metropolitan Police said.

Madeleine’s parents have not commented during the “active police investigation”, staff at the Find Madeleine Campaign said.

German authorities requested the search as part of their continued attempts to source evidence to implicate prime suspect Christian Brueckner, who is in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz in 2005.

He is due to be released from jail in September if no further charges are brought.

In October last year, Brueckner was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

In 2023, investigators carried out searches near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz.

Brueckner spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017 and had photographs and videos of himself near the reservoir.