The parents of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann were left disappointed on Wednesday after a photo of a blonde girl snapped in Morocco turned out to be a false alert, their spokesman said.
The picture, taken by a Spanish tourist and showing a grainy image of a small girl clinging to the back of a local woman, was splashed on the front pages of British newspapers amid reports of a possible breakthrough.
But by the end of the day, journalists dispatched to investigate the sighting south of Tangiers confirmed they had found the woman and girl in the photograph, and she was not Madeleine.
Then three years old, Madeleine disappeared from a holiday apartment in the southern Portuguese resort town of Praia Da Luz on May 3 while her parents were eating nearby.
"Clearly, if these reports that the girl in the photograph isn't Madeleine are true, it is disappointing news," said Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann.
"This is why Gerry and Kate refused to comment on individual sightings and why I was advising caution overnight," said the spokesman, who had warned that the couple feared going on an "emotional rollercoaster."
"Clearly, the search for Madeleine will continue and I would appeal for everyone to refocus their efforts to achieve her safe return," he said.
The tourist snap, the first such image to surface, shows a light-skinned, small girl being carried on the back of an elderly Moroccan woman, and was taken just over three weeks ago in northern Morocco by a Spanish tourist.
Clara Torres of Albacete, Spain, said she took the photo on the morning of Aug. 31 in the town of Zinat on the road between Chaouen to Tetuan while on a holiday in Morocco with her family.
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