DETECTIVES investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have ruled out a key sighting of a man carrying a little girl on the day she went missing.

But Scotland Yard officers are focusing on a new sighting of another man with dark hair who was also seen with a child in his arms around 45 minutes later.

Police are also trying to identify a number of men seen lurking around the apartment where it is believed she was abducted.

The team now say a man seen carrying a child by the McCanns' friend Jane Tanner was an innocent British holidaymaker.

Investigators are looking at a spate of break-ins in the area, one of which happened in the same week a year before Madeleine went missing from a holiday complex in Praia da Luz in the Algarve in May 2007. In one of the cases, a man got into a flat where young children were sleeping.

Investigators are using a number of e-fits. Two had already been released, and four new ones were shown last night.

Two of the e-fits were of a man who was seen carrying a child.

The others are drawn from descriptions of men who were seen in the area around the time that Madeleine disappeared. Two are of fair-haired men who fit similar descriptions.

One is of a man who was seen twice by the same witness near the flat where the McCanns were staying. He was aged 30 to 35, thin, with short hair, shaving spots on his face and was wearing a black leather jacket. Another witness saw a similar-looking man in the resort.

There are also two e-fits of Portuguese men, one aged 40 to 45, who knocked on the door of the apartment where the McCanns were to stay on April 25 or 26 between 2.30pm and 3pm, saying that he was a charity collector.

The other, aged 25 to 30, approached a property near the Ocean Club where the McCann family were staying earlier on the day she disappeared.

A reconstruction of the events surrounding her disappearance, which occurred as her parents Kate and Glasgow-born Gerry McCann dined with friends, was aired on the BBC's Crimewatch last night.

Speaking after a new appeal aired on the show, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood said: "Our focus in terms of understanding what happened on the night of May 3 has now given us a shift of emphasis. We are almost certain that the man seen by Jane Tanner is not Madeleine's abductor.

"It takes us through to a position at 10pm when we see another man who is walking towards the ocean, close by to the apartment, with a young child in his arms. This child is described as being about three to four years of age with blonde hair, possibly wearing pyjamas, and the man is a white man with dark hair.

"If this is you, and you are ­nothing to do with Madeleine's disappearance, then we really need to speak to you. It's so important for us to eliminate innocent sightings. But equally if anybody is looking at those e-fits and recognises the person, for whatever reason, then please have the courage to call in and tell us."

Investigators are also trying to identify fair-haired men seen near the apartment at the time who could be Dutch or German, and TV appeals will be run in the Netherlands and Germany, although not Portugal.

Mr Redwood said: "There are one or two men who appear to be lurking around the apartments in the area itself. A consistent theme in the physical descriptions of those sightings is possibly blonde or fair hair.

"So we are just asking the public quite simply 'Are these connected?' But more importantly 'Is this you?' Because if it's innocent, then it's really important for us to take out those innocent sightings."

They are also looking at bogus charity collectors who were operating in the area at the time, and at a spate of burglaries that peaked in the month Madeleine went missing. Mr Redwood said: "In the week Madeleine disappeared but in the year before in 2006 that two children were in an apartment when a man came in and he appears to have come through the patio door, had a look around inside and definitely had a look into one of the cots and then left without taking anything.

"Then one of the children raised the alarm."