SKY

'Let Beautiful Madeleine Come Home'

Updated:12:44, Thursday May 10, 2007

The parents of a three-year-old who has gone missing in a Portuguese holiday resort have made an emotional appeal for her safe return.

"Words cannot describe the anguish and despair we are feeling," said the father of the missing girl, Gerry McCann, in a televised statement.

"Please, if you have our Madeleine, let her come home to her mummy, daddy, brother and sister."

Mr McCann also begged members of the public who might have information regarding his daughter's disappearance to contact the police.

A major hunt is under way in the town Praia da Luz for the British girl after she disappeared from her bedroom in a holiday apartment while her parents were eating in the hotel dining room 40 yards away.

Sky's Ian Woods, who is at the destination, has said: "With every passing hour, one must fear the worst."

"That Madeleine simply walked out the apartment on her own seems the least likely scenario."

Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, had been sleeping in a locked apartment at the Ocean Club, a Mark Warner resort.

The toddler's aunt Trish Cameron described how Madeleine's mother, Katie, had returned to check on her children when she encountered the horrifying scene.

"The door was lying open, the window in the bedroom and the shutters had been jemmied open," said Mrs Cameron.

Jo Wheeler, a Sky News weather presenter who lives in Luz, says the search for the missing girl has been "absolutely astounding".

"The Ocean Club handed out maps of the village for people to search - and the areas have been coloured in as they have been checked."

"A group is now heading out on horseback to comb rougher ground."

She doubted that the toddler could have reached the beach, saying: "For the little girl to go to the beach she would have to have taken a long and tortuous journey which she could not have made herself.

"She would have had to have crossed several roads and walked three quarters of a mile."

The Ocean Club where the family were staying

The Foreign Office said airports and border police had been alerted.

Portuguese police have brought in sniffer dogs and are searching local beaches.

A Mark Warner spokesman in the UK said: "We are all hoping that she is asleep under a bush somewhere and we will find her soon."

Mr McCann is a cardiologist at Glenfield hospital in Leicester.

Doug Skehan, consultant cardiologist and work colleague of Mr McCann, said: "Gerry McCann is a popular hard working colleague, for whom we have great affection," he said.

"The mood in the hospital is one of great concern and we hope that Kate and Gerry will have their daughter back very soon."

A neighbour of the McCann family, Penny Noble, said: "We are absolutely devastated. They are a really nice family and good neighbours.

"They are delightful. We see them take their bikes up and down and going for walks.

"Madeleine is a very happy-go-lucky little girl".