The search for Madeleine McCann ends with a slim chance of a breakthrough

SILVES, Portugal (Reuters) – Police on Thursday completed the latest search operation in the search for 16-year-old missing Briton Madeleine McCann after collecting unspecified samples at a reservoir in Portugal, while a German prosecutor downplayed hopes of an impending breakthrough.

Portuguese police said in a statement that the three-day operation requested by Germany was now over and that the material collected would be handed over to German authorities after “safeguarding the interests of the investigations still ongoing in Portugal.”

Police would not say whether useful clues were found during the search, which included sniffer dogs, the use of a tractor-based tree trimmer and raking the cleared ground in some small areas.

A source familiar with the investigation told Reuters there was nothing tangible to report.

German authorities, who have named a suspect in the case, have been helping Portuguese crews comb the remote inland area of ​​the Algarve coastal town where McCann, then three, went missing during a family holiday in 2007.

“Of course there is a certain level of expectation, but it is not high,” prosecutor Christian Wolters told Reuters before the end of the search.

It was important to show that authorities were investigating the case, he said. He added that investigators were looking for the body, but also for anything that could help the investigation, such as clothing: “Many things are conceivable.”

He did not expect that the results of the tests on the collected samples would be announced in the foreseeable future.

Last year, German prosecutors named Christian Brückner as an official suspect in McCann’s disappearance. The convicted child molester and drug dealer is behind bars in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same part of the Algarve.

Brueckner has denied any involvement in the disappearance. No body was found.

British police, who were assisting their Portuguese and German counterparts at the Arade reservoir, had left early Thursday afternoon, followed by German investigators who set up camp at a hilltop camp.

(Reporting by Jan Schwartz and Marco Trujillo, additional reporting by Catarina Demony, writing by Rachel More and Andrei Khalip, editing by Andrew Heavens, Nick Macfie and Deepa Babington)