Kate [McCann] and her husband Gerry, a consultant cardiologist, have told family and friends they suspect their daughter was snatched while her two-year-old twin brother and sister were sound asleep in cots on either side of her.

Madeleine, who was born by IVF treatment, disappeared from the family's ground-floor holiday apartment at the 'family friendly' Mark Warner holiday complex in the Praia da Luz resort as her parents ate at a tapas restaurant close by.

The child's aunt, Trish Cameron, yesterday described the frantic telephone call she received after the couple discovered their daughter was missing around ten o'clock on Thursday night.

"It was my young brother Gerry distraught on the phone, breaking his heart. He said: 'Madeleine's been abducted, she's been abducted'.

"They kept going back to check the kids every half hour. The restaurant was only 40 yards away. He went back at nine o'clock to check the children. They were all sound asleep, windows shut, shutters shut."

Kate then went over to the two-bedroom ground-floor apartment and 'came out screaming', said Mrs Cameron. 'The door was lying open, the window in the bedroom and the shutters had been jemmied open.