BELGIUM:Police in Belgium are analysing DNA and fingerprint evidence from a soft drinks bottle and a straw in the search for missing Madeleine McCann.
Detectives are taking seriously an alleged sighting of the girl who was seen with a couple at the De Pauze restaurant in Tongeren, near the Dutch border, last weekend. Yesterday they issued an impression of the man in his 40s who was seen with her.
The latest alleged sighting comes three months after the four-year-old was abducted from a holiday apartment in the Algarve, Portugal. A police spokeswoman added that results from the DNA test were expected next week.
Police also have part of the number plate of the Belgian-registered Volvo estate car that the couple, described by witnesses as behaving strangely, drove away in. The car was later reported to have been seen in the Netherlands.
A spokeswoman said the sighting had come from a child therapist. "She was 100 per cent sure it was Madeleine and is a trusted witness. She works with children and noticed something unusual. She said the woman spoke English and the man was Dutch."
The therapist told restaurant waitress Jolien Houbrech that the couple did not seem to be acting like a mother and father.
"She had noticed that the behaviour was not that of normal parents," Ms Houbrech said. "After she said that, I said maybe she should call it in to the police."
Ms Houbrech said the child had long blonde hair and appeared to be about five or six. Madeleine was a few days away from her fourth birthday when she disappeared from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in May.
It is not the first alleged sighting of Madeleine, with earlier reports coming from Morocco, Malta and Greece.
Chief Insp Olegario Sousa, of the Portuguese police, said he had been notified almost immediately after the sighting, though he could not say whether it would provide a breakthrough in an otherwise slow-moving investigation.
"We will have to wait and see but, as we have done since day one, we take every lead seriously," he said.
Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, yesterday marked the third month of her disappearance by travelling to the Spanish city of Huelva, just across the border from the Algarve.
"Gerry and I want to remind people that our lovely little girl, Madeleine, is still missing," Mrs McCann said. "We do not know where she is, or where she has been taken, but would urge tourists and residents in Portugal and Spain to keep looking for Madeleine."