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The body of a wealthy businessman's daughter - kidnapped last week and held for a one million euro ransom - has been found in Germany.

Anneli-Marie R. was snatched off the street last week in the city of Meissen as she walked her dog.

A police blackout on the abduction was lifted on Monday after weekend negotiations with the kidnappers broke down.

Her parents begged for her safe return and pledged to pay her abductors whatever they wanted.

But last night came the grim news from a murder squad in Dresden that her corpse had been discovered in an abandoned farmyard in the village of Klipphausen not far from her home.

"We are working on the assumption it is Anneli," said police spokesman Thomas Knaup. Two men have been arrested, one in Dresden, the other in a town in Bavaria.

Both were seized in raids by squads of armed police in the hours before dawn today.

Media reports said one man was aged 39 and jobless, the other 61 and a metalworker. Police used sniffer dogs and a heat-seeking helicopter to turn up the body.

"Anneli, we miss you, we are with you," her heartbroken parents said in a statement on Monday morning.

Anneli - whose full name has not been released - left her home at 7.30pm on Thursday with her pet dog and bicycle.

Her bicycle was later found in a ditch and the dog turned up alive on Monday afternoon in a field.

In June in Germany gangsters kidnapped the handicapped elderly son of Reinhold Wuerth, a billionaire industrialist, demanding £1.5 million. But they later let Markus Wuerth, 50, go free.

The parents said in an open letter to the abductors of their child; "The kidnappers should know that we will fulfill their demands in order to be able to take out child in our arms again soon."

Now they are both in the care of police psychologists.