Gardai carried out a search yesterday of bog-land in the Pettigo area of south-east Donegal as part of inquiries into the disappearance of a Co Tyrone teenager missing for over four years.
Arlene Arkinson, then 15, from Castlederg, disappeared after attending a disco in Bundoran's Palace Hotel, Donegal, on August 14th, 1994, sparking off one of the largest and long-running police searches in Northern Ireland.
She was last seen in her home town the following day in the company of a man, but no trace of her was ever found after that.
This latest search is concentrated in isolated bog-land just a short distance from the Fermanagh border and about 10 miles from Bundoran.
Investigating detectives initially believed the girl had been murdered and her body dumped in an isolated area near the Border.
A senior Garda officer in Ballyshannon confirmed last night that the search was undertaken following a request from the RUC. Supt Gerry Phillips said it was part of the ongoing investigation by the RUC into the girl's disappearance.
"A number of locations have been identified by them which may be of assistance as part of their inquiry. Pettigo has been identified as one of these locations and we have a team involved manually searching the bog-land," he said.
Supt Phillips said the operation would last until they were satisfied that the area had been thoroughly searched.
The youngest of a family of seven, Arlene usually stayed with brothers and sisters in the Castlederg area following the death of her mother when she was 11. Family members assumed at the time of her disappearance that she was in another house, but when she failed to turn up after six days, police were notified.
Widespread searches of the Castlederg area were undertaken but uncovered nothing. A reported sighting of her in Warrington, England, in November of that year was also ruled out. As the search continued without success, it soon became clear that police were looking for a body when hopes of finding her alive faded.
In July 1997 police dug up the garden of the home of her sister, Kathleen, in Castlederg following a tip-off and took away the soil for forensic examination. However, the search proved fruitless and gave police no further leads.
Her sister criticised the RUC at the time, claiming that the unnecessary search was undertaken because of information supplied to the police by someone with a grudge against her family.