McCanns sympathic over Aisling disappearance

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MISSING: Police hold grave concerns for two-year-old Aisling Symes.

Reuters

MISSING: Madeleine disappeared in May 2007 from a resort in southern Portugal.

Search for Aisling

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TRIBUTE: A boy lays a bouquet amid flowers and toys left outside the property which had belonged to the Symes family.

Desperate search for Aisling

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The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann have expressed their sympathy for the family of Auckland toddler Aisling Symes who disappeared six days ago.

Doctors Gerry and Kate McCann had conveyed their best wishes to Alan and Angela Symes for the safe return of two-year-old Aisling who is strongly suspected of being abducted, the UK Press Association reported.

Madeleine McCann disappeared in May 2007, just days short of her fourth birthday from a holiday flat in Portugal as her parents dined at a nearby restaurant.

Despite a massive worldwide hunt she has never been found.

Mr and Mrs McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, said in a statement: "Our thoughts and prayers are with Aisling and her family. We wish Aisling's parents the strength and support they will be needing at this most painful time, and we join them in hoping for Aisling's safe and speedy return.

"We urge anyone who has any information about Aisling to come forward to the local police as soon as possible and end this family's suffering."

Police have increased to 60 the number of officers searching for Aisling who disappeared from outside her deceased grandparents home in Longburn Road, Henderson, on Monday evening.

Her parents had been preparing the house to put on the market when their daughter vanished.

Mrs Symes told a press conference yesterday she had been inspecting a washing machine with Aisling and her elder daughter Caitlin, five, in tow.

"I turned off the hot tap, looked behind me she was there watching what Caty and I were up to.

"I turned off the cold tap looked behind me and she was gone - that fast."

She leapt out the door screaming out Aisling's name, but there was no trace of her.

"I just can't believe that she moved so quickly. In the time it took just to turn off a tap, she was gone."

Mrs Symes had a message for her daughter's abductor.

"She's not a doll. She's somebody who loves her parents, her family, her sister, her pets. She belongs with us. She needs to be back with us.

"We miss her terribly and no matter what reason you took her, whatever you're going through, look what you're putting her through, look what you're putting us through.".

Yesterday police issued a plea for the person who took the girl to drop her off at a safe place - preferably a hospital.

A group of bilingual volunteers from the Asian community have been door-knocking in the area where Aisling went missing.

She was last seen in Longburn Road talking to an Asian woman The woman is thought to be about 35 years old, about 165 cm tall, with dark long hair, wore a black crew neck top, with three-quarter length sleeves, three-quarter length blue jeans, black leather sandals and black socks, and had a black and grey medium sized dog on a lead.

National Party MP Pansy Wong said about 20 people who spoke Punjabi, Korean, Mandarin or Cantonese have covered eight streets in the Longburn area, Radio New Zealand reported.

They gained no information about the Asian woman sought, but have helped raise people's awareness of the missing girl, she told Radio New Zealand.

Appeals were continuing through Asian radio stations, she added.

- NZPA