The fresh search for Madeleine McCann who disappeared 18 years ago has come to an end.

Police from Portugal and Germany had returned to Portugal’s southern Algarve region, where the then three-year-old British girl was last seen, to look for evidence this week.

Vans with German licence plates, and a Portuguese police vehicle, have since been seen leaving the search sites in Atalaia, a neighbourhood of Lagos municipality.

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There were no immediate announcements on the outcome of the operation.

A source involved in the operation said the searched area had included several derelict houses, wells, and reservoirs covering “dozens of hectares”.

Heavy machinery and radar technology which can scan 4.5m beneath the ground was brought in. Rubble was also moved by hand in some of the more delicate areas on the 50ha search site.

The last search for McCann was carried out in May 2023, when police combed an inland reservoir in the Algarve but did not find anything.

McCann went missing on May 3, 2007, while on holiday with her family in the Algarve town of Praia da Luz, sparking a frenzied search and gaining the attention of the world’s media.

She has never been found.

German police in June 2020 said McCann was presumed dead and German citizen Christian Brueckner was probably responsible.

One of the houses where Brueckner lived also formed part of the latest search effort, according to news reports by CNN Portugal and German newspaper Bild.

He has denied responsibility.

Brueckner, a convicted child abuser and drug dealer, is behind bars in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same area of the Algarve.

His sentence runs until September, meaning he is set for release unless prosecutors find enough evidence to charge him over McCann’s disappearance.