Search for missing Corrie to resume, confirm police

The search of a landfill site for traces of missing Fife airman Corrie McKeague is to resume.

Suffolk Constabulary announced yesterday that the search would continue for a further six weeks at the Milton landfill site in Cambridgeshire.

Officers spent 20 weeks trawling through waste at the tip before calling off the operation in July.

The force said the decision to keep searching was made “after thorough consideration of all the issues involved”.

After checking all the data available, the major investigation team at Suffolk is certain the area, known as cell 22, searched earlier this year is where Corrie is most likely to be found.

However, police said it was “not a precise science”.

Detective Superintendent Katie Elliott said: “Throughout this rigorous investigation we have remained committed to following all reasonable lines of inquiry in our endeavours to discover what has happened to Corrie.

“Confronted by the variances in the way waste can be deposited and through further investigation we cannot discount the possibility Corrie may be elsewhere in cell 22. Therefore, we believe our decision to extend the search area is the correct one.”

Police have kept Corrie’s mother Nicola Urquhart and his father Martin McKeague informed of developments.

Corrie, from Dunfermline, was a gunner based at RAF Honington. He had gone out with friends in Bury St Edmunds on Friday September 23 and failed to turn up to work the following Monday.

It is believed he may have fallen asleep in a bin and ended up at a landfill site in Milton.

Corrie McKeague has been missing for more than a year.