Missing girls: Police draw blank

The girls were wearing identical Manchester United shirts when they went missing

SOHAM, England -- British police hunting two missing 10-year-old girls in a wood 10 miles from where they disappeared say their search has drawn a blank.

Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells were last seen in their hometown Soham, in Cambridgeshire, eastern England on August 4.

Emerging from the woods on the edge of Newmarket, where police began their search on Thursday after a jogger said he had seen some disturbed earth, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb said: "We can now say that there is no connection with the disappearance of Holly and Jessica."

He said forensic experts had been conducting fingertip and visual searches during the night. The jogger had also previously told police that he had heard the sound of teenagers screaming in the area on the day the girls disappeared.

Hebb said the search was careful and detailed, "a very similar process to an archeological dig." But he added that officers eventually found just "loose mounds of earth with nothing underneath."

More than 340 police officers are involved in the search

News that no bodies had been found will have given renewed hope to the girls' families and police. Detectives are continuing to trace a motorist seen struggling with two children in a car on Soham on the day the girls were last seen.

The case of the missing girls in their Manchester United shirts has shocked Britain. Several newspapers have offered rewards totalling more than £1 million ($1.5 million) for any information leading to their safe return. (Full story)

Hebb defended police handling of the inquiry after criticism from the taxi driver who says he saw the motorist struggling with two children in the green car, believed to be a Vauxhall Vectra, near where the schoolgirls were last seen a week ago on Sunday.