UK girl's parents pray for her return 

The parents of a three-year-old British girl abducted from a holiday beach resort in Portugal prayed on Sunday for her safe return, saying they continued to hope she would be found.

Gerry and Kate McCann attended church in the Praia da Luz holiday village, where their daughter Madeleine disappeared on Thursday night from the family's villa apartment.

"Please continue to pray for Madeleine," Kate McCann said as she and her husband left the church in a statement to reporters waiting outside.

"From today's service the thing we are going to take from this is strength and courage and hope, we continue to hope for the best possible outcome from this for us and for Madeleine," her husband added.

Up to 150 Portuguese police officials are searching for the blonde-haired girl and British police officials have also travelled to the Algarve to help.

The McCanns had put Madeleine to bed and were dining 50 metres away with friends when she vanished from the apartment where they were staying.

They had immediately insisted she was abducted because there was evidence of a forced entry into the bedroom where she had been sleeping.

Portuguese police initially treated her disappearance as a missing person case but on Saturday confirmed they believed Madeleine had been kidnapped.

Portuguese newspapers reported on Sunday that there had been poor co-ordination between police forces and the Foreigners and Frontiers Service, which is charged with controlling the country's borders.

Daily Diario de Noticias said the frontiers service had only been alerted of Madeleine's disappearance 12 hours after police first knew about the case.

The paper said that in cases involving foreigners, the service should be alerted immediately.

Another paper, Correio de Manha, said the main border crossing from the Portuguese Algarve to Spain had no special controls in place whatsoever until Saturday afternoon.

However, police said on Saturday they believed Madeleine was still in Portugal. All airports, in Portugal and Spain, had been alerted, they said.