A bin lorry may have carried missing RAF gunner Corrie McKeague to a landfill site, police believe.

Suffolk Police said the search of the area was the "next logical step" after the vehicle's waste load was found to be far heavier than first thought.

The vehicle made a collection near where the Fife airman was last seen in Bury St Edmunds and took a route which appeared to coincide with the movements of his phone.

Despite initial suggestions the load of the lorry was 11kg, police said it was found to be more than 100kg.

Forensic examinations previously found no traces of Mr McKeague in the lorry.

His mother, Nicola Urquhart, said the weight discrepancy can "only mean one thing".

Writing on the Facebook page set up to find him, she said: "With the weight of the bin that was lifted the night Corrie went missing has been incorrect and the true weight is over 100kg (sic).

"This can really devastatingly only mean one thing. I can only pray that Corrie is found quickly and that we are able to get answers as to how this could have happened.

"Please can I ask everyone on here to try really hard not to speculate just now. Each second waiting to find Corrie is torture enough.

"This page was set up to find Corrie. We still need to do this. From myself, Makeyan and Darroch thank you for your neverending support more than ever."

The 23-year-old, from Fife, vanished on a night out with friends on September 24 in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

The last CCTV sighting of Mr McKeague showed him walking from a shop doorway and into a horseshoe-shaped area in Brentgovel Street, with no sign of him emerging.

The drastic difference in weight prompted police to swoop on a 26-year-old man, who was not the driver, before he was bailed on March 1.

He was arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice by misleading officers about the weight, but on Tuesday was told he faced no further action.

It follows detectives concluding he was not hiding information, police said.

Detective superintendent Katie Elliott said: "Through the persistence of officers and their detailed work we recently identified that the data provided was incorrect.

"We now know the weight of the waste collection from the 'horseshoe' on the night Corrie went missing was over 100kg, when the original information we were given indicated that this was 11kg, and this makes our search of the landfill the next logical step to try to find Corrie.

"The investigation has identified that the company who provided the data usually charge per collection, not per weight of load collected, and it appears that it was genuinely believed by the company that the data provided was correct.

"There was no intention to mislead the investigation, however our discovery, through persisting with this through our inquiries and evidence gathering, now puts a new emphasis on the search."

The search of the landfill site in Milton, Cambridgeshire will take six to ten weeks, covering around 920 square metres up to a depth of eight metres, police said.

It follows work to move 8000 tonnes of bulk material to make the area safe to search. Ms Elliott said: "We have had to be methodical and systematic in our approach to ensure we were not ruling out the line of inquiry that may give us the answers.

"The search of the landfill is a huge undertaking, and still may not provide the answer as to what happened, but now, with new information uncovered by the officers working on the case, this is the priority," Ms Elliott said.