POLICE have recorded statements from as many as 20 witnesses including family members to assist in the investigation of the missing Irish teenager Nora Quoirin, said Negri Sembilan deputy police chief Che Zakaria Othman.

He said although the investigation into the case was categorised as “missing person”, police did not rule out other possibilities and the investigation carried out was thorough.

The forensic team has also taken some fingerprints on the windows of the living room as well as the entire building (chalet) and these have been sent to Bukit Aman for further action.

“To date, no new clues have been obtained from the search and rescue (SAR) team,” he said.

He added that the scale of the operations was huge and had been expanded with the addition of two more search zones to six.

“The number of the members in the SAR operation has also increased to 214 members today compared to 159 yesterday,” he said.

Commenting on the family who still believe the victim could have been abducted, Che Zakaria said such a response might be due to the emotional loss of a 15-year-old special-needs teenager.

Meanwhile, a SAR member shared his experience and told Bernama that the jungle and dark areas were among the challenges that rescuers had to face.

He said the search area also had many large, slippery rocky places that required every member to be more careful.

“Today’s fourth-day operation began in a gloomy, cloudy weather this morning with light rain compared to previous days when we had good weather,” he said.

He said the hilly and steep terrain, filled with huge trees as high as a three-storey building, was not an easy area for such an operation although most of them had extensive experience and training. – Bernama, August 7, 2019.