Revealed: The rundown home where the four-year-old 'Greek Maddie' lived with her gypsy 'abductors'

McCann spokesman says missing children 'can still be out there waiting to be found'

Unidentified girl can only speak obscure Roma language



Man, 39, and woman, 40, arrested and charged with abducting a minor

The girl has fair hair and pale skin and bears no resemblance to them



DNA testing proved she was not related to the couple



C harity now caring for the girl requests global hunt to find her real parents

The first pictures of the gipsy camp where an abducted four-year-old girl was rescued in Greece emerged yesterday as the international appeal to identify the child continued.

The discovery of the blonde, blue-eyed girl, who police believe may be from northern or eastern Europe, gives hope that Madeleine McCann may also be found alive.

Last night, the girl – known only as Maria – was safely playing with other children at a house run by Greek charity The Smile Of The Child, which is caring for her.



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Discovery: The house at the Roma camp in Farsala, central Greece, where the four-year-old blonde girl was found this week during a raid by police

Squalid: The Roma camp where police claim they have found 10 children who could be victims of child trafficking

Rubbish-strewn: The camp in Greece where Maria was found. Police have launched an international appeal to discover her identity

Missing and found: Madeleine McCann vanished on May 3, 2007 from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal while police are appealing for help identifying this blonde girl, known only as Maria, who was found on a gypsy camp in Greece after she was allegedly abducted



Who is she? The four-year-old sparked one of the officer's curiosity as she is pale skinned and bore no resemblance to the other children or the couple who claimed to be her parents

The authorities are sure she does not belong to the adults she was living with, and her nationality and the circumstances under which she left her real family remain a mystery.

Maria was found last Wednesday in a Roma settlement in Farsala, central Greece, after a police officer became suspicious because her pale complexion and blonde hair stood out during a routine raid on illegal activities.

DNA tests proved she was not related to the couple with whom she was living.



A 39-year-old man and a woman, 40, have been charged with abducting a minor.



Police have requested assistance from Interpol.

Photographs of the girl suggest her hair may have been dyed when she was younger as the bottom half of her plaits are brown.

Maria only speaks Roma but appears to understand Greek and is also being communicated with using sign language, according to staff at The Smile Of The Child.

One employee told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The little girl was terrified when she first came to us and didn’t talk at all, but she is now calm and has been playing with the other kids.’

Playground: Roma children having fun inside the camp at the camp with corrugated iron for a roof on many of the buildings

Local resident: A man with a double pushchair at the Roma camp in Farsala where the child was discovered

Gypsy camp: A Roma resident at the site which police believe may be the centre of a child trafficking ring

Camp site: Clothes are hang out on the fence to dry at the camp which was raided by police looking for drugs and weapons

Distress: Dirty and grimacing as her photo is taken, the little girl is now the centre of an international appeal. Authorities hope her parents can be found so the family can be reunited

Panayiotis Pardalis, a spokesman for the charity, said: ‘It was obvious that she was not a Roma girl. She was afraid and under some psychological pressure when she arrived.

‘She was living under bad conditions and was very dirty, but is now safe.’

Charity director Costas Giannopoulos said the child was undergoing medical examinations.



The youngster was discovered by authorities living in a Roma gypsy camp in Farsala in central Greece

Aerial view: Farsala, in central eastern Greece, is one of its largest towns in the region a mainly agricultural area

Do you know her? The poster issued by the Greek police requesting help identifying the girl

ECHOES OF MISSING BEN NEEDHAM

Ben Needham disappeared on the holiday isle of Kos in 1999 aged just 21 months, sparking a huge but ultimately unsuccessful police hunt. He was seized within moments of him going to play outside a farmhouse, which his grandfather was renovating in the village of Iraklise. His mother was working as a waitress on the island at the time.

Investigators suspect the blonde-haired child was abducted by a gypsy gang, and sold to the highest bidder for adoption. But a bungled police inquiry – which was heavily criticised by Ben’s family - failed to track down the culprits. Despite a number of possible sightings and a range of theories about what happened to him, no trace of the youngster has ever been found.

‘We are shocked by how easy it is for people to register children as their own,’ he told Greek television.

Police believe up to ten more children found at the camp may be the victims of a trafficking ring.

Delphine Moralis, secretary general of Missing Children Europe, said: ‘This case is very unusual in that we’re looking for the child’s family, rather than the child.’

She said The Smile Of The Child, a member organisation of Missing Children Europe, have several houses in Greece where they take children ‘who have nowhere else to go’.

Maria’s discovery gives fresh hope for other British families with missing children, including the tragic case of Ben Needham, the Sheffield boy who went missing in Kos in 1991, aged 21 months.

Ben’s sister, Leighanna, said the discovery was ‘very significant to Ben’s case’.

‘It gives us great hope that one day this will be Ben.



Child trafficking and illegal adoption in Greece has been pretty high and that’s exactly what they thought had happened to Ben – that he was taken for a childless family and passed through gipsy camps,’ she told the BBC.

Maria was found just days after the Metropolitan Police revealed the results of a major review of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.