This month also marks Madeleine McCann’s 21st birthday (Picture: PA)
The parents of Madeleine McCann have said her ‘absence still aches’ in a message posted to social media marking 17 years since she disappeared.
Madeleine vanished on May 3, 2007, while on holiday with her parents in Praia da Luz, Portugal, after they left the then three-year-old and her younger twin siblings asleep in their apartment while they went out to dinner with friends.
This month is also her 21st birthday.
In a message on the Official Find Madeleine Campaign Facebook page, Kate and Gerry McCann said: ‘It’s 17 years since Madeleine was taken from us. It’s hard to even say that number without shaking our heads in disbelief.
‘Whilst we are fortunate in many ways and able to live a relatively normal and enjoyable life now, the “living in limbo” is still very unsettling. And the absence still aches.
‘Your support continues to encourage us and bolsters our strength to keep going.
‘We know the love and hope for Madeleine and the will to find her, even after so many years, remains, and we are truly thankful for that.
‘Thank you again for remembering Madeleine and all missing children.’
Madeleine’s parents Gerry, left, and Kate McCann said in their update that ‘the will to find her, even after so many years, remains’ (Picture: AP)
It comes days after additional funding totalling up to £192,000 was granted by the Home Office for Operation Grange, the Scotland Yard investigation into the disappearance.
During questioning of Madeleine’s parents in September 2007, detectives made them both ‘arguidos’ – or suspects – in their daughter’s disappearance.
That status was eventually lifted and the investigation was shelved in 2008, but the couple remained under suspicion in Portugal for years.
The prime suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance is currently on trial in Germany charged with unrelated sex offences, allegedly committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
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The 47-year-old German, only known as Christian B because of the country’s strict privacy laws, spent many years in Portugal – including in Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.
He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for the rape of an elderly woman at her home in the resort town in 2005.
He had denied all the charges against him and any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
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