Police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have sealed off an area of scrubland in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz to begin fresh searches, which are expected to involve the use of ground-penetrating radar.
The equipment will detect whether the ground has been disturbed and excavations of any site could then follow.
Last month, Scotland Yard said it would begin a "substantial phase of activity on the ground" as part of the renewed investigation into Madeleine's disappearance.
The BBC reported that the operation was under way on Monday, with Portuguese police and dogs at the site, which is surrounded by flats and villas, many of them holiday properties. The initial search, involving a dozen British officers who will oversee the effort, is to focus on wasteland 300 metres from the Ocean Club apartments, where the McCanns were staying. The ground, which had been used to grow cabbages, is now hard and covered with bushes and thick grass.
The site has reportedly been selected because of its proximity to the Ocean Club resort and because it is in the direction of the spot where a suspect was seen walking with a little girl in his arms the night of Madeleine's disappearance.
The ground searches are expected to focus on three parts of the resort where three-year-old Madeleine went missing on 3 May 2007 while her mother and father, Kate and Gerry McCann, were having dinner with friends at a tapas restaurant near their holiday apartment.
Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Mark Rowley said last month the operation in Praia da Luz did not amount to a significant breakthrough, instead describing it as the "routine slog" of an ongoing investigation. He said there were many fruitful lines of inquiry being explored but conceded: "We may go through every line of inquiry and all of them draw a blank."
Rowley appealed for media restraint ahead of the searches, a call that was echoed by a Polícia Judiciária source in Lisbon who insisted the investigation would not be "transformed into a media circus".
The renewed searches followed negotiations between Britain and Portugal involving various international letters of request from Britain. Each search requires prior approval from prosecutors in Portugal. British police began a review of the case in 2011 at the instigation of David Cameron following appeals from the McCanns and then launched their own investigation.
