A search of a landfill site as part of the investigation into the disappearance of missing Fife airman Corrie McKeague is to resume on Monday.
Suffolk Police confirmed that search teams will be back at the Milton landfill next week as the hunt for the 23-year-old gunner is again stepped up.
Corrie has not been seen since September 24 2016, when he vanished after a night out in Bury St Edmunds.
The movement of his phone signal matched that of a bin lorry that picked up rubbish bins in the early hours that morning, prompting police to focus their probe on the landfill site in more recent months.
That was halted after 20 weeks of painstaking searching in all conditions, but police subsequently committed to revisiting the landfill after new information came to light.
The extended search, which is likely to take around four to six weeks and will start on Monday morning, will concentrate on an area next to the section of site which was searched previously.
A Suffolk Police spokesperson said: “The indications are this is the next most likely area where Corrie could be.
“Careful re-checking of the data available to the Major Investigation Team has concluded the area of the original 20-week search is still the location where there was the highest likelihood of finding Corrie.
“However, the nature of waste disposal and its movement is not a precise science, hence the requirement to extend the search.”
Corrie’s mum Nicola Urquhart marked the year’s anniversary of her son’s disappearance last month by retracing his last known movements in Bury St Edmunds.
CCTV images captured Corrie entered an area of town known as the Horseshoe at about 3.25am on September 24 last year, but no trace of him has been found since.
The landfill site at Milton is around the size of 68 football pitches, with the size of Cell 22 – the area where the previous search was conducted – alone covering around 10,000 square metres.
Suffolk Police say the volume of the new area being searched is around 1,831 cubic metres.
