Police in Paraguay have launched a huge search operation after a researcher claimed to have spotted Madeleine McCann with a woman in the town of Aregua.
While many professional investigators have dismissed the reports, the British man, Miraz Ullah Ali, reportedly voiced his concerns that the missing girl was living in the city in a newspaper article, prompting local police stations and Interpol to send officers out to scour the streets for a woman and child fitting his description.
Ali told Color ABC:
‘My team and I received the information that Madeleine arrived in Paraguay a month or two ago and is living in Areguá in the custody of a woman.’
Madeleine vanished from her bedroom at a Praia de Luz resort in the Algarve on May 3, 2007. Nine years and thousands of ‘sightings’ later, police are no closer to finding the child, who would now be 12. Age-progressed images suggest she may look like this:
Local deputy chief commissioner Sanny Amarilla said local police are taking the tip seriously:
“This news stretches across the globe, it is very important. So if they are in the area we need to find this girl and return her to her family.
‘We are investigating neighbourhoods where there are foreign citizens, villas, condos, to see if there is someone with a similar description that corresponds to the newspaper clipping.”
While the search is ongoing, Interpol inspector Luis Ignacio Arias told EFE that the agency has zero ‘concrete’ information on the man who made the claims.
A spokesman for Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann said the family is aware of the latest reported sighting.
