Belgium braced as child's body found
Belgian police search for bodies in Liege
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Wednesday, 28, Jun 2006 02:18
The body of a young girl has been found near where two girls went missing almost three weeks ago, Belgian media has reported.
Stacy Lemmens, seven, and Nathalie Mahy, ten, disappeared on the evening of June 9th in Liege and have not been seen since.
And reports from Belgium today suggest that the body of the younger girl has been found near a railway track just 200 metres from the Les Armuriers cafe in Saint-Leonard, where the girls disappeared.
A source told the AFP news agency that the body was likely to be that of Stacy, while other reports suggest that she is likely to have been killed on the night she went missing.
The case has been the focus of huge media attention in the country, particularly as it has striking similarities to the Marc Dutroux case ten years ago.
Dutroux kidnapped and raped six young girls, murdering two of them and leaving two others to starve to death in a cellar between 1995 and 1996.
The incident caused shock and outrage in the country and led to a massive police investigation into paedophile rings in the country.
Police are currently questioning Abdullah Ait-Oud, a convicted paedophile who gave himself up to police two weeks ago but has denied involvement in the girls' disappearances.
Reports suggest his girlfriend worked at the cafe where the girls were last seen.