A German police van with tinted windows was seen on Tuesday (June 3) driving in and out from an area in Portugal's southern Algarve region that is being searched for evidence related to the case of Madeleine McCann.

Portuguese and German police on Tuesday launched joint searches of a "vast" area in the Algarve region for new evidence related to the 2007 disappearance of the three-year-old British child.

Portugal's investigative Judicial Police (PJ) had said on Monday they would execute search warrants between June 2 and 6 at the behest of the public prosecutor's office in Germany's Braunschweig, which in 2022 formally identified German national Christian Brueckner as an official suspect in the case.

A source involved in the search operation said the targeted area was "vast" with police using ground-penetrating radar across several hectares. Portuguese officers were following instructions from German police under a European Investigation Order.

The scale of the searches could be the most extensive since the initial investigation was closed in 2008.

Fresh but relatively focused searches were ordered by Portuguese, British and German police of scrubland, wells and reservoirs in 2014, 2020 and 2023. None of these searches were confirmed to have yielded significant evidence.

Reuters footage showed uniformed PJ officers on a cordon on a dirt road in Atalaia - a neighborhood of Lagos municipality - waving through unmarked vans and cars with German license plates from the city of Wiesbaden, where the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has its headquarters.