A search team hunting for missing RAF gunner Corrie McKeague has trawled through 60 tonnes of waste at a landfill site.
The dig is likely to continue for up to 10 weeks as the team sifts through rubbish up to eight metres deep at the dump near Cambridge.
It comes after new clues suggested a bin lorry carried the serviceman - who vanished on a night out with friends in Bury St Edmunds on September 24 – to the landfill site in Milton.
Detectives said the waste lorry which was spotted on CCTV collecting rubbish in the area where Mr McKeague was last seen collected a much heavier load than first thought – 15st 10lb.
Nicola Urquhart, Mr McKeague’s mother, said the new evidence about the truck’s weight can “only mean one thing”.
She wrote on a social media page called Find Corrie: "With the weight of the bin that was lifted the night Corrie went missing has been incorrect and the true weight is over 100kg (sic).
"This can really devastatingly only mean one thing.
"I can only pray that Corrie is found quickly and that we are able to get answers as to how this could have happened.
"Please can I ask everyone on here to try really hard not to speculate just now. Each second waiting to find Corrie is torture enough.
"This page was set up to find Corrie. We still need to do this.”
On Wednesday search teams began sifting through waste at the dump in the hunt for the 23-year-old, from Fife.
A digger is mechanically excavating mounds of waste and officers in white protective suits raking through it on the ground.
