Scientists work on 'lengthy' task of identifying the bodies

In wooded fenland at Thetford Forest Park about half a mile to the east of the A1065, forensic experts last night were going about the gruesome task of identifying two bodies.

A police spokesman said the examination of the area would be a "long process".

The bodies were discovered beside a track surrounded by fen and farmland, on Forestry Commission land that is crisscrossed with tracks and paths and close to a holiday centre.

Police were refusing last night to comment on the age or sex of the bodies.

For the previous 24 hours, hi-tech military equipment and personnel used for finding hidden or buried objects had been used to search for the missing schoolgirls, as the focus in the newly-announced murder investigation became the hunt for Jessica and Holly's remains.

Last night the work continuedbehind police cordons and the natural barriers of hedgerows and trees surrounding two separate search sites, while teams of forensic experts and scene-of-crime officers were quietly combing the home and workplaces of the two prime suspects.

Cambridgeshire police expected the search of the detached house shared by caretaker Ian Huntley, 28, and former teaching assistant Maxine Carr, 25, along with two adjoining schools in Soham, to last "certainly days, possibly weeks''. In a sign of the determination of those leading Operation Fincham to dismantle every potential hiding place, a separate search was started seven miles away at the home of Mr Huntley's parents, in the town of Littleport.

But after nearly a fortnight in which almost every development and police response was conducted under the constant gaze of television cameras and journalists, this was the day when the shutters came down. The media and the public were kept at least 150 metres from the Soham search site. The only evidence of the task at hand were the blue police tape and the passage of vans with blacked-out windows.

Sources confirmed that, on top of the conventional police resources of search teams and forensic specialists, the search was being conducted by Ministry of Defence personnel using equipment so sensitive that an exclusion zone was set up around central Soham.

An officer involved in the operation said: "We are talking about personnel and equipment which, if widely seen, could jeopardise future operations of this nature.''

The exact nature of the military equipment remained secret. The armed forces have made significant advances in recent years in developing technology for use in manhunt operations such as those seen in Afghanistan.

The focus of the painstaking effort remained the 1,000 square metre municipal area on the edge of central Soham containing the two-storey 1960s home of Mr Huntley and Ms Carr as well as St Andrew's primary school, attended by Jessica and Holly, and Soham Village College.

It was in this secondary school – where Mr Huntley is caretaker – that the search teams found in the early hours the "items of major interest'' that led to the arrest of the couple for the suspected murder of the schoolgirls.

Detectives yesterday declined to discuss the nature of the "items".