Missing French toddler – latest: ‘Only hope is Emile has been taken and is alive,’ Le Vernet mayor says

We’re pausing our coverage of the search for Emile for the evening but keep checking independent.co.uk for the latest updates.

The best hope for a toddler missing in France is that “he’s been kidnapped and is alive,” the local mayor has said.

Two-year-old Emile has not been seen since he vanished from his maternal grandparents’ home in the quiet village of Le Vernet in the Alpes-des-Haute-Provence on Saturday.

He was reported missing which prompted a large scale search operation to locate him but five days later, police admitted they had “no clue” what happened to the tot and called off the physical search.

In a new interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, local mayor Francois Balique commented on the rescue efforts, that involved a helicopter broadcasting the voice of Emile’s mother over the region.

He said: “Our only hope now is that he’s been taken and is alive. It’s the last thing we can hope for and it’s already terrible.

“We could consider that someone wanting to cause harm to a child passed by the area, that he saw this beautiful little boy and took him away. He couldn’t survive alone in the wild, that’s for sure.”

Messages of hope continue to pour in for missing French toddler Emile after police called off the physical search yesterday.

In an emotional comment on Twitter, one person wrote: "Emile does not leave our thoughts.

"His beautiful face haunts our hearts which are afraid for him. All our prayers to find this little angel safe and sound."

Another person wrote: “All my thoughts for this little child”.

A third added: “Everyone should be sad and worried for this little boy and hope he is found soon.”

The mayor of Vernet has said offered a possible explanation for Emile’s disappearance in his interview with French newspaper Le Figaro.

“It is difficult to favour one hypothesis over another,” Francois Balique said. “But the probabilities and the rationality would lead us to believe that we are dealing with an accident. And since little Emile’s body has not been found, it means that he was not alone at the time.

“We can consider a car accident in which the driver would have panicked and concealed the body. That’s one hypothesis. In any case, in the village, we never believed it to be a sordid kidnapping because we see all the people who frequent the area. A foreign car would have been noticed,” he added.

The mayor of Le Vernet has said “our only hope is Emile has been taken and is alive,” as the whereabouts of the French toddler who went missing last Saturday remain unknown.

In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, Francois Balique was asked about possible explanations for Emile’s disappearance, after the two-year-old vanished from his grandparents’ home in the Alpine village.

Mr Balique said: “Our only hope now is that he’s been taken and is alive. It’s the last thing we can hope for and it’s already terrible. We could conceive that someone wanting a child passed by the area, saw this beautiful little boy and took him away. He couldn’t survive alone in the wild, that’s for sure.”

The mayor of Le Vernet, Francois Balique gave reporters an update in the search for Emile during a press conference on Friday.

He confirmed the last teams of gendarmes, military police officers, had left the Alpine village, following a final search for the two-year-old boy on Thursday. “The investigation is continuing elsewhere,” Mr Balique said, according to La Provence.

He also expressed his desire for life in Le Vernet to return to some degree of normalcy in the wake of the extensive search operation, adding: “We are a small mountain village, a normal village.”

A Le Vernet resident, who has lived in the Alpine village for 20 years, described missing toddler Emile as a “very sociable child”.

The retiree told La Provence his family is “very close knit, very religious” and that she went to see “how I could help them” after she learned Emile was missing.

She also said she never expected a “tragedy” like this in Le Vernet, but shared she had always been “wary” and “never left my grandson alone”. Despite that, he once “escaped” her attention and was later brought home by a neighbour.

“Everyone told me that I was too stressed. It’s true that in the hamletm the children walk around, everyone knows them, we always know from which family is such a child.” she added.

“It has become the village of chaos,” Christian Girard, the National Assembly representative for the Alpes-des-Haute department, said.

“With everything that has happened in recent years, it’s really sad. I think Vernet did not need this additional publicity,” Mr Girard told La Provence, referring to a slew of tragedies that have struck the quiet Alpine village in the last 15 years.

Le Vernet’s mayor since 1977, Francois Balique also reacted to the village’s history of devastation, including the crash of Germanwings flight 9525, adding: “We are alone in these moments.”

He told the French-language publication: “For the Germanwings [crash], I did not have the support of a single elected official. For Emile, I must admit that I had a lot more messages.”

The manager of a local restaurant said staff had looked “everywhere for Emile” after news spread that the two-year-old toddler had vanished from his grandparents’ home in Le Vernet, an Alpine village with around 20 homes.

“We were preparing for the evening service, when we were told the child had gone missing,” the manager told La Provence.

“We all went to see what we could do to help as quickly as possible. “We have looked in places where he could be, we have really looked everywhere for him.”

Nearly a week since two-year-old Emile was last seen, here’s everything we know about his disappearance:

On Saturday 8 July, the toddler went missing from a property in Le Vernet, a small village in the Alpes-des-Haute-Provence with around 125 inhabitants. Emile’s family lives in Marseille, and he was on holiday at his maternal grandparents’ home at the time of his disappearance.

Police said at least 10 people were present at the property amid a family reunion, including Emile’s aunts and uncles as well as “some minors”.

The family was due to leave for a hiking outing, and Emile’s grandparents noticed he was missing when they went to put him in the car.

Emile was reportedly seen by two people when he left their home but they “lost sight of him”. Described as 3ft tall, with brown eyes and blond hair, Emile was wearing a yellow T-shirt, white shorts with a green pattern, and walking shoes when he disappeared.

Police issued an appeal for information about Emile on 9 July and launched an extensive search operation in Le Vernet, aided by nearly 500 volunteers.

On 13 July, the search was called off and investigators admitted they had “no clue” what had happened to Emile.

Police will now sort through evidence that has been collected to try and establish Emile’s whereabouts.