Madeleine 'seen in Belgian bank'

Belgium Police are examining CCTV footage of a girl seen in a Belgian bank which could be Madeleine McCann.

The report of the sighting comes as officers sift through hundreds of other sightings of the missing three-year-old.

A bank security worker said she saw the girl on Monday accompanied by a woman of North African appearance, on CCTV footage from a branch of KBC Bank in the west of Brussels.

The footage has now been handed to police who told reporters the child "was said to be much like Madeleine".

Belgian police said they had received more than 100 reports of possible sightings of the youngster and around 30 merited further investigation.

The sightings come after it was revealed a Scotland Yard informant suggested Madeleine was stolen to order by a Belgian paedophile gang.

Investigators employed by Gerry and Kate McCann are vigorously pursuing the leads.

The McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell said the couple's investigators welcomed information about all possible sightings but were most interested in recent reports.

"The critical information they really need is recent sightings that would suggest where Madeleine is now."

Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from her family's holiday flat in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3 last year.

Alain Remue, who heads the Belgian police missing persons unit, said about a third of the reported sightings in Belgium were from clairvoyants and another third lacked concrete information. Around 30, however, they were able to investigate further.

He said officers had examined "every possible link" between the disappearance and the information they had received.

Belgian sightings recorded in Portuguese police files released this week included one from Line Compere, 31, who told Belgian police she saw a child who looked "very much" like Madeleine with an eastern European couple on May 15 last year.

A British traveller contacted police after seeing a child asleep on a train from Brussels to Antwerp on May 27 last year and concluding she could have been drugged.

And a girl looking strikingly like Madeleine was spotted in a shop in Mouscron, near the French border, accompanied by an English-speaking woman on June 2 last year.

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