Yesterday marked exactly seven years since the little girl vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on the Algarve.

But at a special prayer service in the McCanns’ home village of Rothley, Leics, dad Gerry, 45, said he and wife Kate had been buoyed by the Scotland Yard probe.

He said: “They are going back out to Portugal very soon. They are chipping away and there is new evidence.

“We are going to continue hoping we get a happy outcome – and one day we will know what’s happening.”

But the Portuguese have accused the Metropolitan Police of going on a “media offensive” over the case. They say leads recently publicised by the Met are “very flimsy”.

And they say claims about imminent arrests are not true.

A well-placed source said: “They’re pulling their hair out in relation to recent allegations by the Met.

“They’re very angry the ­British police have gone on a media offensive.

“Furthermore, the information is not consistent with the information they have.”

Last year, Portuguese authorities agreed to re-open the probe into Madeleine’s 2007 disappearance after a review by the Met.

In January, British police suggested three burglars were prime suspects.

The source said: “The Met have sent them three letters saying they want to interview the three burglars…they’ve had those letters quite a long time.

“The Portugese are ­saying ‘We have got it but we won’t be doing that tomorrow, not soon, not in the near future will we be acting on that. This is our investigation and we won’t be acting on the Met police stuff (any time soon)’. Relationships (with the Met) are so poor, they felt the Met would be better off building a relationship with them than going out doing press.”

In March, the Met appealed for information about a sex attacker linked to 12 break-ins in the Algarve.

Five young girls were said to have been sexually assaulted during four of the raids.

In an update last month, the Met said the appeal had yielded information on six more incidents, including an attack on a girl in Praia da Luz two years before Madeleine vanished.

The suspect, they said, was “smelly” and “pot-bellied” and it was reported that arrests might be made soon.

But our source said the Portuguese police believe the information publicised by the Met is “very flimsy” and claimed they had not shared the leads with them.

“The Portuguese are saying if your young girl has been assaulted while you are on holiday, why not report it then or at least as soon as you get home. If it’s a serious allegation of sexual assault, why not report it at the time?

“They are not saying these things didn’t happen but they are saying ‘Why is it all coming out now?’

“They don’t know even the nature of these indecent assaults and it is all very flimsy.

“The Portuguese are saying lines of inquiry they (the Met) have aren’t ones brought to our intention and the relationship is very poor, this is a Portuguese investigation and the idea of imminent arrests isn’t true.”

Yesterday a tearful Kate, 46, told villagers at the low-key outdoor prayer service: “We are still battling, still hoping, still searching for Madeleine.”

She added: “The past seven years have been so difficult and painful.”