Searches for Madeleine McCann have ramped up in Portugal, with police using radar technology and a digger to clear debris around an abandoned building a mile from where the British toddler was last seen in 2007.

On Wednesday, teams of Portuguese and German police officers, as well as firefighters, continued focusing on derelict structures in countryside a few miles from the resort of Praia da Luz.

The new searches for Madeleine began on Tuesday, 18 years after the three-year-old disappeared from Praia da Luz while her parents were out having dinner, leaving her sleeping in a nearby room with her toddler twin siblings.

Police with specialist hi-tech equipment faced the daunting task of hunting for evidence amid intense international media scrutiny. The sounds of chainsaws and strimmers could be heard as investigators appeared to continue clearing areas of scrubland in Atalaia, on the outskirts of Praia da Luz.

Officers later returned to a building that was initially searched on Tuesday and used a backhoe digger and ground-penetrating radar. The equipment is capable of scanning up to 33ft (10 metres) underground.

Police also used the digger to clear rubble around a building and emptied a nearby disused structure of debris. Bricks and rocks could be seen piled outside the graffitied structure.

The teams wore protective gear, including hard hats and masks, as they cleared vegetation around the structures.

Police officers stopped journalists from getting close to the search areas, which were cordoned off with tape.

Kate and Gerry McCann, Madeleine’s parents, were not commenting during the “active police investigation”, staff at the Find Madeleine campaign said.

The search is being carried out at the request of the German federal police, as they look for evidence that could implicate the prime suspect, Christian Brückner, who is in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz in 2005. He has repeatedly denied any involvement.

He was living in a nearby cottage at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance. On Wednesday, a British woman who lived next door to Brückner described him as an “angry” young man who could be heard having rows with his girlfriend.

The woman, who has lived in the area since the 80s, said: “I saw him just as a neighbour. He raped a lady in the town, I heard about that afterwards, he was just a ghastly piece of work.”

She said his former cottage had not been searched this week. “I know the properties [being searched] because I ride up there all the time with my horse, I know exactly where they are. Whether he [Brückner] had been up there or done anything, I have no clue.”

Commenting on police efforts to drain nearby wells, she said: “There may have been one or two wells in the old days. Obviously they have been derelict for as long as I have been there, since the 80s … The fact they are going to dredge them seems absolutely ludicrous, but who knows.”

She said Brückner deserved to be locked away for the rest of his life “because of what he has done and what’s been uncovered about him is quite despicable”.

Brückner is due to be released from jail in September if no further charges are brought. In October last year, he was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

About 30 German police, including forensic experts, and Portuguese officers are taking part in the search, covering an estimated 120 acres, which is expected to last until Friday. The Metropolitan police in the UK said they were aware of the operation but British officers would not be present.

German investigators and Portuguese officers carried out searches in 2023, near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz.

Brückner, who spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017, had photographs and videos of himself near the reservoir. It was searched in 2008, when the Portuguese lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia paid for specialist divers to examine it, after he claimed to have been tipped off by criminal contacts that Madeleine’s body was there.

British police were given permission in 2014 to examine scrubland near where she vanished.