BELGIUM has been plunged into shock after two girls disappeared at a street party in Liège, the town where the serial paedophile murderer Marc Dutroux abducted two of his victims 11 years ago.

The faces of stepsisters Nathalie Mahy, 10, and Stacy Lemmens, 7, stare out from the front pages of every newspaper and 30,000 posters across the country. They disappeared in the early hours of Saturday. The authorities, desperate not to repeat their incompetence in tracking down Dutroux, have put 60 officers on the case.

But yesterday they suspended their search after five days of combing the neighbourhood, including helicopter searches of the River Meuse, yielded nothing. There have been no sightings, and the girls’ computers and mobile phones have yielded no clues.

Anne Bourgauigmont, the investigative prosecutor, said that police had searched everywhere the girls might have been but had found nothing.Police want to speak to a “primary witness”, known as Abdullah A, 41, who was seen near the girls before they went missing but who has since disappeared himself. Nathalie and Stacy, whose family has a history of domestic problems, were last seen at 1.30am on Saturday playing beside an inflatable castle outside the Les Armuriers café in the neighbourhood of Saint-Leonard.

Catherine Dizier, Nathalie’s mother, and Thierry Lemmens, Stacy’s father, who are in a relationship, were drinking heavily inside the café, surrounded by their four other children.

The parents, who have been criticised for keeping young children in a bar so late, and recently surrendered their one-year-old baby to social services, discovered that the older girls were missing when they prepared to go home. “Everyone in the café searched for the young girls, but without success,” Julio Blazquez, the bar owner and cousin of Mr Lemmens, said. Across the neighbourhood, windows are now covered with posters of the girls.

Murielle and Jean-François, who run a corner shop, said that they were in shock. “Everyone asks the question — where are they? The more time passes the more the anxiety mounts,” they said.

Mme Dizier said: “It is true that it is an ordeal, but one must keep things together for the children. I have no news. (Nathalie) will know, and Stacy also, that they are being looked for. It is necessary that they keep up their courage.”

Belgium was already shaken by the failure of the authorities to capture Dutroux, who abducted, raped and murdered four girls and abducted, serially raped and held hostage two others.

In June 1995 Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, both 8, vanished as they played outside their house in Liège. Their bodies were found a year later in shallow graves in Dutroux’s garden. He was jailed for life.

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