Police investigating a reported sighting Madeleine McCann in Morocco have said that a blonde girl found in a remote village was not the missing youngster.

Officers had searched the coastal towns of Fnideq and Al Hoceima in the north of the kingdom following a tip off that Madeleine had been seen in the area.

But the search was called off, after officers found that a girl with a similar description was in fact the daughter of a local family.

Abdelmajid Chadili, the head of Morocco’s judicial police, said: “In the case of Fnideq, we did find a small blonde girl. We found she was among her true parents and I can tell you she only speaks Arabic.”

Mr Chadili, speaking at Interpol’s general assembly in Marrakesh, warned people not to get their hopes up every time a blonde child was seen in the north African country.

“In a far away country, some people think it’s not possible that a small blonde girl can be Moroccan. But it’s true, we have children with blonde hair.”

The news will come as a blow to Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, 39, who had hoped that they were close to a breakthrough in their search for their daughter. The couple, from Rothley, Leicestershire, are official suspects in their daughter's disappearance.

There have been several reported sightings of Madeleine in Morocco following her disappearance from her bedroom in Praia da Luz , Portugal, on May 3, shortly before her fourth birthday.

A Spanish private detective agency hired by Mr and Mrs McCann to search for their daughter has said it believes she had been taken to Morocco, The fast ferry from Spain to north Africa is a five-hour drive from Praia da Luz.

But the suggestion has been dismissed by senior Moroccan police officers who said there was no history of children being smuggled into the country from Europe.

Chakib Benmoussaas, the Interior Minister, insisted yesterday: “We have no new evidence suggesting such a presence in Morocco. We have co-operated for a long time with Portuguese and British police through Interpol and we have not had any new development on this case up until now.”

However, the most recent sighting had been considered significant because it is the only report of a girl matching Madeleine's description who also has a similar elongated pupil in her right eye.

Naoual Malhi, 24, a Spanish woman of Moroccan origin, told police that the girl was in the arms of a middle-aged woman in Fnideq at the end of September. When she tried to share their taxi to the port town of Al Hoceima, a common practice in Morocco, the woman refused.

Ms Malhi said yesterday that she had received anonymous death threats from men claiming to work for the country’s crime barons warning her to keep her mouth shut about what she saw - and to abandon plans to investigate the sighting herself.

Ms Malhi, whose daughter is the same age as Madeleine, said that one caller told her: “Let this lie if you know what’s good for you, your daughter and the rest of your family, otherwise you’re a dead woman next time you’re in Morocco.”

She said: “They’ve warned me I’m going to be killed next time I step on Moroccan soil unless I shut my mouth about Madeleine."

Madeleine’s parents had visited Morocco at the beginning of June as part of an international campaign to promote the search for their daughter. In August a Spanish tourist had photographed a fair-haired child bearing a striking resemblance to the missing youngster. That sighting also turned out to be a local girl.

Meanwhile, Portuguese detectives are still preparing to travel to Britain to reinterview at least four of the seven British friends who were on holiday with the McCann family in Praia da Luz.

The friends are likely to be made official suspects so that they can be challenged about apparent inconsistencies in their witnesses statements and to allow them to have a lawyer present during the interviews.

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