Australian police charge man with missing nine-year-old girl’s murder

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian police charged a 32-year-old man on Wednesday with murder after the body of a nine-year-old girl, who went missing since while on holiday with family, was found in a barrel and dumped in a river near the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

Hundreds of police, emergency workers and fire service volunteers have been searching for five days near the property in Blue Mountains where the girl’s family was staying until her remains were found in a barrel, New South Wales (NSW) police said.

“We found the human remains consistent with the missing girl … until the post-mortem is conducted, we are still uncertain of what exactly happened to her,” NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson said during a media conference.

The accused man was refused bail to appear in a court on Wednesday, the police said.

(Reporting by Renju Jose; Editing by Michael Perry)