A British man has been found dead near his family holiday home in Portugal.
Police had been searching for the 28-year-old since Friday after relatives raised the alarm and said they had been unable to contact him.
The search in the area around the village of Saboia near the town of Odemira just above the Algarve in Portugal’s Alentejo region was called off yesterday following the grim discovery.
Police had been joined by firefighters and used drones and sniffer dogs in the hunt.
Officials have so far been unable to confirm exactly where the unnamed Brit’s body was found.
Police were searching in the area around the village of Saboia (pictured) near the town of Odemira after a 29-year-old British man was reported missing on Friday (stock image)
Police had been searching for the 28-year-old since Friday after relatives raised the alarm and said they had been unable to contact him
But the search is understood to have focused on the area around the rural property where the dead man was spending time before being expanded to dense woodland close to the banks of the Mira River.
The results of the autopsy are unlikely to be publicly released but police sources said today the death was not believed to be crime-related.
Local reports said the British man, who is understood to have travelled to the holiday home every year, had unspecified ‘health problems.’
Village residents said he was not well-known in the area.
Although the police search only began on Friday, he is thought to have been reported missing two days earlier.
Earlier this month a 48-year-old British man named only as Steven Michael B was found dead more than a week after Spanish mountain rescue police were mobilised to help look for him near the northern Spanish village of Las Salas.
Portugal’s Alentejo region where the police had focused their search efforts before the grim discovery of the man’s body (stock image)
The 48-year-old vanished on July 11 after a row with his wife and was found on July 21 in the village church bell tower.
Well-placed sources said ahead of an autopsy they weren’t looking for anyone else in connection with keen mountaineer Steven’s death.
Last month a missing British hiker was found dead in the Spanish Pyrenees.
Police and other emergency services had been searching for the 70-year-old Londoner after he disappeared on June 24.
On June 27 it emerged he had been found dead close to the Aspe Peak, a mountain in the western Pyrenees of Huesca on the western side of the Aragon Valley.
The 8,678ft peak towers over the Spanish ski resort of Candanchu and the Somport pass on the border with France.
The three Greim officers who found the unnamed hiker’s body informed a police helicopter which was in the area so he could be transferred to a nearby mountain refuge and handed over to funeral parlour workers.
The dead man is understood to have been walking between the Lizara and Candanchu mountain refuges.
Jay Slater (pictured), 19, disappeared on June 17 near the Tenerife village of Masca and his body was found nearly a month later. He is believed to have fallen in mountains after becoming disorientated and suffered fatal injuries including head wounds
The Civil Guard in Huesca had received a message from the UK’s Interpol office in Manchester giving them the coordinates of an SOS wristband the hiker was wearing.
Footage released by the Civil Guard at the time showed the operation to rescue the tragic Brit’s body.
Apprentice bricklayer Jay Slater, 19, disappeared on June 17 near the Tenerife village of Masca and his body was found nearly a month later. He is believed to have fallen in mountains after becoming disorientated and suffered fatal injuries including head wounds.
Trainee barrister Ben Ross, 26, went missing in Majorca for 12 days in Majorca before turning up ‘dehydrated and exhausted’ at the British Consulate in Palma on Monday.
His worried mum Felix Robinson had flown to the island to look for him before their emotional reunion.