Toddler went missing from his home overnight

Missing boy: Three-year-old Mikaeel Kular was put to bed at 9pm last night and has not been seen since, sparking a police hunt

The coastguard and mountain rescue experts have been called in to help police hunting for three-year-old Mikaeel Kular, who has vanished from his home after going to bed last night.

The area around his home in Ferry Gait, Edinburgh has been swamped with teams looking for the boy, who was last seen when he was put down to sleep at around 9pm last night. 

Officers say it was the boy's 'distraught' mother who discovered he was missing at 7.20am, and his coat and shoes have also gone.

As fears grow for his safety, police are going door-to-door and searching gardens
for the toddler.

Meanwhile forensics teams are slowing checking his block of flats and neighbouring ones for any sign of the missing three-year-old.

The little boy, who has four siblings, including a twin sister, is 3ft tall and possibly wearing a beige hooded jacket, brown shoes and jogging bottoms.

Police in Edinburgh had said there is no evidence to suggest criminality, but have since held a man in Waterfront Gait, a mile from where the boy lived.

Nine riots vans sped to the area and it is believed a flat is being searched in a block there.

Police Scotland said the man was arrested for an unrelated offence.

Officers with sniffer dogs are on the streets hunting for Mikaeel, and a helicopter is also combing the area in the north-west of the city.

Coastguard teams and lifeboats have been searching the shoreline in the Cramond and Drylaw area.

Detectives are trying to work out how the child managed to leave the property, and will have to consider if the child was snatched or if he slipped out of his bed, put on his coat and shoes and walked out.

SOURCE-DAILYM