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COPS will begin hunting for Madeleine McCann’s body at 9am local time today on the Algarve in a "last-throw-of-the-dice".
The new search for Madeleine will focus on extensive groundworks that took place at the time she vanished.
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German authorities have requested the four-day searches close to the ramshackle cottage convicted paedophile and sole suspect Christian Brueckner used to live - near to the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz where Maddie vanished in 18 years ago..
A police theory is the three-year-old or her pyjamas might have been dumped in trenches near the holiday resort.
Around 30 officers from Germany’s FBI arrived in the area around 7.30pm last night after Portuguese officials sealed off dirt roads and erected blue tents by scrubland in preparation for today’s operation.
They are equipped with ground-penetrating radar that can scan 15ft below the surface.
The major search, the first for more than two years in Portugal, will focus on wells, ruins, and water storage tanks on 21 plots of privately-owned land thought to cover around 120 acres.
But cracks were already appearing this morning between the Portuguese cops who have made it clear they are simply “complying” with decisions they haven’t taken and their German counterparts.
Brueckner, currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a 2005 Praia da Luz rape and yet to be formally charged over Madeleine’s disappearance despite being named as the sole suspect, is set for release from jail in September.
The area was a rat run for prolific thief Brueckner and leads to the property where he raped a US woman in 2005 — for which he is currently in a German jail.
A source said: “It’s now or never.”
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