Forensic tests show specks of blood on the wall of a Portuguese holiday apartment where four-year-old Madeleine McCann was last seen are not hers.

Highly trained sniffer dogs brought from Britain found the blood more than a week ago and about three months after the girl's disappearance from the seaside resort.

Kate McCann, the mother of missing British girl Madeleine McCann, holds a poster of her daughter.
(Abdeljalil Bounhar/Associated Press)

Investigators say the DNA testing shows the blood came from a Spanish man, likely someone who stayed in the flat after police concluded their initial search for the girl, CBC's Harry Forestell said Thursday.

That news may come as a relief to her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, who fiercely believe she is still alive.

However, Portuguese police have recently acknowledged for the first time that the girl might be dead.

Investigators say another sniffer dog detected a scent indicating a corpse had been in the family's holiday apartment.

"In the past few days, there have been some developments and clues that have been found that could point to the possible death of this child," chief inspector Olegario Sousa told the BBC in an interview over the weekend.

The McCanns, both doctors, have been in Portugal since their daughter's disappearance on May 3.

The girl went missing from the apartment where she was sleeping with her two-year-old twin siblings in a rented flat on Portugal's southern Algarve resort coast while her parents were dining in the resort's restaurant about 50 metres away.

Her mother told the U.K. newspaper the Daily Mail that unless she and her husband see real evidence their daughter has been killed, they would continue to believe she's alive.