Police officers searching for Madeleine McCann are scouring a lake in Portugal for the pink pajamas the British toddler was wearing when she vanished in 2007, Daily Mail reported, citing sources.

The officers acting on “credible information” are seeking any fragments of clothing and old rags that could be related to her disappearance.

Investigators took “a number of bags” away from the remote Algarve reservoir yesterday, according to the report.

Investigators were seen digging near a reservoir in Portugal in a long-running probe into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

The Arade dam is 50km from Praia da Luz, where the British toddler went missing 16 years ago.

The operation is being led by German police looking for evidence to link her disappearance to suspect Christian Brueckner.

Sniffer dogs were used in a search of the reservoir’s banks, and police officers went out into the water on an inflatable boat, BBC reported.

Uniformed and plain-clothed police officers spent hours scouring the scrubland, using pickaxes and inspecting small rocks with rakes and spades.

While British authorities have disclosed the millions spent on Scotland Yard’s Operation Grange, launched in 2011, German and Portuguese authorities have not revealed exactly how much their efforts to find Madeleine McCann have cost.

However, in 2012, Portugal’s then-attorney general is reported to have claimed that the search for the missing girl had been the most expensive in the country’s history.

The last search for evidence in the case in Portugal came in 2014, when British police were given permission to examine scrubland near where she vanished.

Last month, a court in the German city of Braunschweig threw out unrelated rape and sexual offences against suspect Christian Brueckner, as the court had no jurisdiction.

His lawyer Friedrich Fuelscher told Reuters that the decision meant legal authorities there had no jurisdiction over the Madeleine McCann case.

A fortnight prior to the fresh search, Madeleine McCann’s sister spoke publicly for the first time since her sibling’s disappearance 16 years ago.

At a vigil marking the anniversary, Amelie, now aged 18, said: “It’s nice that everyone is here together but it’s a sad occasion.”

The informal prayer meeting, attended by about 70 people, took place in the family’s home village of Rothley in Leicestershire earlier this month. Parents Kate and Gerry McCann took part, although Sean, Amelie’s twin brother, did not.

Madeleine McCann’s disappearance has puzzled detectives for more than 15 years – but in 2020 a new potential suspect emerged. Now, police are searching a remote reservoir in Portugal’s the Algarve that he used to visit in a renewed effort to shed further light on the case.

German prisoner Christian Brueckner was first named in connection with the unsolved mystery that summer, and officially named as a suspect last year. His yellow and white VW T3 Westfalia campervan was reportedly identified as having been near to the Praia da Luz resort in Portugal where the young girl went missing.

My colleague Lucy Skoulding has more details on the suspect here:

Police have combed the banks of a reservoir in Portugal with the help of sniffer dogs, rakes and pickaxes as part of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Emergency service divers were seen on a rigid-hull inflatable boat early on Tuesday morning at the Barragem do Arade – around 30 miles from Praia da Luz, where the three-year-old went missing in 2007.

Read the full report here:

Four teams of officers from the Portuguese Policia Judiciaria are involved in the operation, along with at least 20 of their German counterparts, Portuguese broadcaster SIC reports.

Officers concentrated their search today at one area of the reservoir – erecting white tents on a hill on the banks.

Further around the water, emergency services and officials from Portugal, Germany and the UK were seen holding briefings near blue police tents.

The new searches come as the Home Office granted an extra £110,000 in funding this financial year for the Metropolitan Police to assist with finding Madeleine McCann, down from just over £300,000 last year.

The total funding given to Operation Grange has been just under £13.1m since 2011.