London: Portuguese police are following a new line of inquiry in the hunt for Madeleine McCann, it was revealed on Monday.

It is understood that detectives are now working on the theory that Madeleine may have been the victim of a burglary which went wrong.

Police are now re-examining a series of break-ins at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz and will interview victims of an intruder at the resort.

One theory is that Madeleine may have been woken by a thief and that she was then killed in the apartment to prevent her screaming.

Her body may then have been weighed down and dumped at sea. Officers are examining local tides and currents to try to pinpoint where a body could have been washed up.

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Police will speak again in the coming days to Pamela Fenn, 73, who owns an apartment above the one where Madeleine was sleeping with her brother and sister, two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie. Madeleine was six days short of her fourth birthday when she vanished.

Mrs Fenn claims to have disturbed an intruder in her flat a few weeks earlier, scaring him off. Her niece will also give a new statement to police, having spotted a suspicious man hanging around the apartment block on the night Madeleine vanished.

It has been suggested the intruder may have had a key to the flat and let himself in.

A similar claim is being made about a burglary at another apartment.

Description of suspect

It is thought Mrs Fenn will make a formal statement to police at the headquarters in Portimao, not far from Praia da Luz. Her niece, who has not been named, has also given a statement to British police in which her description of the suspect matches that given to police by a friend of Gerry and Kate McCann who was dining with them on the night.

Jane Tanner has already told detectives that she saw a man walking away from the apartment carrying a child in a blanket. Ms Tanner now thinks the child could have been Madeleine.

The only official suspect in the case, British-born Robert Murat, is expected to be formally cleared soon.

Murat, who lives in a villa with his mother just a few hundred yards from the McCanns's apartment, has been interviewed several times while his garden has been searched and parts of it dug up.