German police officers have been searching for the body of a missing Kent woman near to one of the places where she was last seen, it has been reported.

Louise Kerton, 24, vanished in the German city of Aachen last July.

Her father believes she was murdered, but the German authorities only recently began treating the case as a criminal investigation.

A German journalist told BBC Kent he saw about 200 officers searching several quarries near the village of Strassfelt where Louise was staying last summer.

Ms Kerton disappeared 13 months ago

The Kent nurse was on her way back to the UK to see her Welsh parents after a visit to her boyfriend's family.

Her disappearance came days after she learnt she had failed her final nursing exams.

The journalist, who works for a paper covering the village, said the District Attorney for the area confirmed to him that they were looking for a missing British woman, which they later admitted was Louise Kerton.

There has not yet been any confirmation from the German police that the search took place or if anything was found.

Criminal investigation

Meanwhile, Ms Kerton's family have been approached to give the go-ahead to a proposed Crimewatch style reconstruction of their missing daughter's last known movements.

In June this year German prosecutors agreed to launch a criminal investigation into Ms Kerton's disappearance.

The move was welcomed by her parents, who said it was long overdue.

Mr Kerton, originally from Abergavenny, had earlier hired formal royal protection chief Dai Davies to investigate his daughter's disappearance and criticised the German investigation.

He and his wife Kathy, from north Wales, now live in Kent.

The couple have spent their life savings looking for their daughter and relatives from all over Wales have joined searches in Belgium and Germany.

Human rights

Earlier this year, a team of detectives from Kent travelled to Germany to try to persuade the authorities to start a fresh search.

Mr Kerton said the Germans regarded searching for missing people as an infringement of their human rights unless they were ill or depressed when they disappeared.

Ms Kerton's disappearance followed the high profile case of Lucie Blackman, the former air hostess found raped and murdered in Japan.

The two were friends and had attended the same private school in the south of England.