Australian police playing down the importance of photographs taken by two British backpackers of a man the Britons believe could be a gunman sought after the outback ambush of two travellers.
Police are hunting an unidentified gunman who they fear shot and killed Briton Mr Peter Falconio (28) and tried to abduct his girlfriend in a terrifying attack on a lonely stretch of outback highway in the Northern Territory two weeks ago.
They have followed up hundreds of possible sightings of the gunman but have gathered few firm leads despite a massive manhunt using Aboriginal trackers and aircraft across an area five times the size of Britain.
But hopes of a breakthrough rose overnight when two British women said they had met and played pool with a truck driver who closely resembled police sketches of the man being sought over the ambush on the Stuart Highway.
Northern Territory police said they had received photographs taken by the two backpackers and were investigating possible links with the attack on Mr Falconio and his British girlfriend, 27-year-old Mr Joanne Lees.
However, while confirming the photographs were being taken seriously, a police spokeswoman played down their significance. "It’s just another person of interest," she said.
British media reported earlier on Saturday that Portia Wilson and Suzanne French, from Cheshire in central England, had told police they met the outback truck driver at a bar on a different stretch of the same highway.
The women said he closely resembled widely circulated police sketches of the gunman being sought over the outback ambush. "I saw the e-fit on the TV and thought 'God, he looks familiar'", the GuardianMS newspaper quoted Wilson as saying. Then I saw the picture in a newspaper and recognised him as the man in the bar."
British police then sent the women's holiday pictures of the man to Australian investigators.