Hundreds of Muslims held a special prayer session Friday for a Franco-Irish teen who went missing from a Malaysian resort, as a massive search team scoured the jungle for a sixth day.
Nora Quoirin, a 15-year-old with learning difficulties, disappeared Sunday a day after checking into the resort with her London-based family.
They believe she was abducted, but police have classified it as a missing person case.
A search team of more than 260 people backed by helicopters, drones and sniffer dogs is poking through dense jungle next to the resort in southwestern Malaysia but have not found any trace of the teenager.
Some 300 people, many wearing Muslim prayer caps, knelt in prayer during a session dedicated to the teen at a mosque in a nearby town.
“What we’re doing today is to help our friends in the search effort,” said Mohamad Taufek Awaludin, who led the session.
“We hope that the family… will be patient. This is a test from Allah.”
Several police officers and firefighters were among the group. Roughly two-thirds of Malaysia’s 32 million inhabitants are Muslim.
Officials have played a recording of the girl’s mother, Meabh Quoirin, calling out “Nora, Nora darling, mummy’s here” through loudspeakers in the hope of drawing her out of the jungle, if she is still there.
Members of a special police commando unit arrived Friday to help in the search.
Senior police official Che Zakaria Othman conceded the search team had not uncovered any “concrete” clues about the girl’s disappearance.
But he added: “The security forces have not, to this day, given up.”
The daughter of a Franco-Irish couple, Nora went missing from the 12-acre (five-hectare) Dusun Resort, which lies near a forest reserve not far from Kuala Lumpur, in the foothills of a mountain range.
Her family says it would be extremely unusual for the reserved youngster to have wandered off on her own. While officially treating it as a missing person case, police say they have not ruled out other possibilities.
They have questioned around 20 people and are examining fingerprints found on a window pane.
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