The parents of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann were left disappointed after a photo of a blonde girl snapped in Morocco turned out to be a false alert, their spokesman said Wednesday.

The picture, taken by a Spanish tourist and showing a grainy image of a small girl clinging to the back of a local woman, was splashed on the front pages of British newspapers amid reports it could be a breakthrough.

But by the end of the day journalists dispatched to investigate the sighting south of Tangiers confirmed they had found the woman and girl in the picture, and it was not Madeleine.

The toddler disappeared from a holiday apartment in southern Portugal on May 3 while her parents were eating nearby.

"Clearly, if these reports that the girl in the photograph isn't Madeleine are true, it is disappointing news," said Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann.

"This is why Gerry and Kate refused to comment on individual sightings and why I was advising caution overnight," said the spokesman, who had warned that the couple feared going on an "emotional rollecoaster."

And he added: "Clearly, the search for Madeleine will continue and I would appeal for everyone to refocus their efforts to achieve her safe return."

The tourist snap, the first such image to surface, shows a light-skinned, small girl being carried on the back of an elderly Moroccan woman, and was taken just over three weeks ago in northern Morocco by a Spanish tourist.

Clara Torres of the central Spanish city of Albacete said she took the photo on the morning of August 31 in the town of Zinat on the road between Chaouen to Tetuan while on a holiday in Morocco with her family.

Torres said she decided to hand the photo to police on Monday after reading of other recent possible sightings of a girl fitting Madeleine's description in Morocco since she vanished.

"The similarity (to Madeleine) raises shivers," she told Spanish radio station COPE.

But an AFP photographer who tracked down the girl in the picture said it was not Madeleine, but Moroccan girl Bouchra Akchar, who had been snapped being carried by her mother Hafida near their home in the village of Zinat.

Madeleine went missing from her family's holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort town of Praia Da Luz, and her parents -- 39-year-old medical doctors Kate and Gerry -- have been spearheading a global campaign to find her.

Initially the case appeared to focus on an alleged abduction but then the McCanns were named as formal suspects earlier this month.

While there have been several reported sightings of Madeleine from Argentina to Belgium -- which have all been discounted -- this is the first time that a photograph that possibly depicts the girl has come to light.

According to the family, Portuguese police suspect Kate McCann was involved in the accidental death of her daughter and think both parents then tried to cover it up. The McCanns strongly deny any role in Madeleine's disappearance.

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Such a shame that it isn`t the little girl. :sad: