Hundreds of police officers and volunteers searched for a toddler who vanished from a town in the French Alps, but they found “no sign” of him.
Émile, who is two and a half years old, vanished on Saturday while visiting his grandparents in Le Vernet, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.
The hunt for him in the countryside was suspended earlier this evening, four days later.
Local prosecutor Rémy Avon said the ‘physical search’ could go no further, adding there was ‘no sign’ of the little boy.
‘The judicial investigation into the causes of the disappearance will continue,’ he said.
‘In particular by analysing the considerable mass of information and elements collected over the past four days.’
There have been a number of theories about what really happened, including that the Émile was accidentally killed by a car or a tractor, with the driver hiding the body.
Mr Avon said the possibilities that the boy had been murdered, kidnapped, or got involved in an accident were all being look at.
‘All these theories are active, nothing has been ruled out,’ he stressed.
The site has also been off limits to outsiders as of yesterday while the search for his whereabouts continued.
This comes just hours after it was revealed that blood was discovered on the front of a car in the region, which has been sent for scientific analysis.
‘At the moment we don’t even know if it is human blood,’ an investigating source said.