 A Greek charity said yesterday that it was pursuing at least 10 "promising leads" – many from parents whose children had gone missing – following a worldwide appeal to help identify a blonde, blue-eyed girl found living in a Roma camp in the country. The girl, who is thought to be about four years old and answers to the name Maria, was discovered last Wednesday when Greek police raided a Roma settlement near Farsala in Larissa, 170 miles north of Athens, in search of weapons and drugs. "This has never happened before - to have found the child and to be looking for the parents," said Natalie Karakouliafi of the Smile of the Child charity, which is looking after the girl. The girl is expected to be released from hospital on Monday, the same day the couple found raising her are due to appear in court on charges of abducting a minor. The 40-year-old woman and 39-year-old man have been arrested and charged with abducting a minor, and police are investigating whether the girl was a victim of trafficking. Suspicions were further raised when the mother was discovered to have two identities and to have claimed to have given birth to six of her children in the same year. A spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, whose three-year-old daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal in 2007, said the case also gave them hope that she would one day be found alive. Authorities hope that the discovery of the girl will also help crack the mystery of Ben Needham, the Sheffield boy who went missing at the age of 21 months on the Aegean island of Kos 22 years ago.
– The discovery of a mysterious blonde girl at a Roma camp in Greece has spurred more than 10,000 phone calls and emails to the charity trying to identify her. Smile of the Child says it has heard from many parents whose children have gone missing, and it is following up around 10 promising leads, including at least four from the US, the Guardian reports. The girl, who was discovered in the home of a couple with 13 other children, speaks only a Roma dialect and is believed to be around four years old. The couple have been charged with kidnapping and police say they have given at least five different accounts of how the child came to be with them. The Roma community where the girl was found has rallied around the couple, reports the BBC, but social workers suspect the girl was forced to beg in the streets and may have been sexually abused. The charity caring for her says she was "filthy and terrified" when they found her last week but her condition has improved and she is now out of the hospital and playing with other children. "She was frightened and cried herself to sleep," the charity's director tells Reuters. "It has shaken everyone and has helped bring to light a major problem—just how easy it is to traffic children."