An international appeal is under way to identify the body of a boy found weighed down with a flagstone slab and wrapped in foil in the River Danube in Germany.

The child’s remains were discovered near Grossmehring in Bavaria on 19 May last year but it is not known how long he had been in the water.

Investigators believe he was aged between five and six and was likely to have spent time outside of Germany.

The country’s authorities have asked Interpol to circulate a so-called black notice, including facial reconstruction images, to the organisation’s 185 member countries, including the UK.

He was around 110cm (3ft 6ins) tall and weighed around 15kg (2st 4lbs), with brown hair and type O blood.

Jürgen Stock, Interpol secretary general, said: “Through this Black Notice, Interpol is calling upon the global law enforcement community to cross-check databases and consult open or unsolved cases.”

“Someone, somewhere knows something about this boy, making it equally important to release certain details publicly.

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“Whether he was the victim of trafficking, abduction or violence, we are committed to mobilizing all of Interpol’s policing capabilities to identify him and help investigators shed light on his death.”

German police also want to hear from anyone who remembers a missing child matching the description of the boy found in the river whose disappearance might be linked to the case.

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They can work with Interpol to help relatives who believe the boy could be a member of their biological family to get a DNA comparison.

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The black notice has been issued under the Identify Me programme, which was launched in May to help police in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands to identify 22 women and girls they believe have been murdered.

Black notices, which are used to seek information and intelligence on unidentified bodies and to determine the circumstances surrounding the death, are usually circulated internally among Interpol’s global network of police forces.

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