Madeleine McCann search latest: Animal bones among limited findings as police hunt ends in Praia da Luz

Dozens of police from Germany and Portugal have spent three days scouring a 120-acre stretch of scrubland and abandoned buildings for clues about Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.

That effort, which ended on Thursday, is estimated to have cost at least £300,000, The Times reports.

The newspaper reports more than 60 officers have been involved in the hunt, and on Wednesday aerial drones were deployed and an excavator was brought in to help clear rubble.

Searchers also used ground penetrating radar, which can detect abnormalities underground, such as a hidden burial.

The search area is just a couple of miles from Praia de Luz and the Ocean Club resort where Madeleine had been sleeping before she vanished on May 3, 2007.

Christian Brueckner, a German national, remains in jail, serving the final months of a seven-year sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz — the same hotel where Madeleine McCann went missing two years later.

But as he seeks early release from the 2019 sentence, police in Germany are hurrying to charge the prime suspect in the disappearance of the British toddler before he walks free from prison in the next two weeks.

Amy-Clare Martin reports from Praia da Luz:

A neighbour of German suspect Christian Brueckner, who lived near Praia da Luz at the time of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, described him as an “angry” young man who she would hear having rows with his girlfriend.

Brueckner, who has denied any involvement in the McCann case, was living in the town around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.

The neighbour said: “If I was riding past and he'd be standing outside, we'd say hello, you know, how are you,” she said. “Nothing more. Then we found out he was a really nasty piece of work.”

The resident, who used to ride her horse around the 120-acre search area, said the farmhouses and outbuildings on the site have been derelict since at least the 80s.

This week’s search, a few miles from where Madeleine McCann was last seen in a Praia da Luz resort, was just the latest in the years-long, international effort to find answers.

Read the full history of the toddler’s disappearance and the effort to find her below:

German and Portuguese police finished the search for clues in the Madeleine McCann case on Thursday with a beer, after spending three days scouring scrubland and abandoned buildings for any evidence.