Madeleine McCann has been missing since 2007.
German police are searching an area in Hannover in connection with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Prosecutors said police were searching a garden allotment near the former residence of a man suspected of abducting the British girl.
Reports from local newspaper, Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, suggest that heavy machinery is being used to excavate the ground since the early hours of Tuesday morning.
“I can confirm that the search is being carried out in connection with our investigations into the Maddie McCann case,” Brunswick prosecutor Julia Meyer told AFP, when asked about Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung’s report.
Police said in June they had begun investigating a German man in relation to the Madeleine McCann disappearance.
The UK’s Metropolitan police said last month that the suspect was a 43-year-old German man who is currently imprisoned in Germany.
The convicted sex offender was known to be living in the Algarve area when Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007.
She disappeared from an apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal on the evening of 3 May 2007, while her parents were with friends at a nearby tapas bar.
German police have said they have assumed she is dead but British police are still treating it as a “missing persons” investigation.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
