Greece blonde girl: Thousands respond to 'Maria' appeal 
 
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 More than 8,000 calls have been made to a Greek charity after an appeal to discover the identity of a young blonde girl found living on a Roma settlement. 
 
 DNA tests revealed the child, known as Maria and aged about four, was not related to the couple she lived with. 
 
 A woman aged 40 and 39-year-old man are to appear before judges on Monday on charges of abducting a minor and of holding false papers. 
 
 The Roma community where the girl was found has rallied around them. 
 
 The head of the Roma association in Farsala in central Greece says the couple treated her better than their biological children and that she loved them. 
 
 The brother of the man claiming to be Maria's father repeated the defence that she had been given to them lawfully after her birth, says the BBC's Mark Lowen in Athens. 
 
 But the couple are suspected by social workers of kidnapping the girl and sending her out to beg, or involving her in a sex ring. 
 
 An appeal has been launched throughout Europe 
 
 Police initially raided the Roma camp to search for drugs and weapons. 
 
 They noticed the lack of resemblance between the blonde-haired, green-eyed, pale-skinned little girl and her parents, and found further discrepancies when they investigated the family's documents. 
 
 The couple had registered different numbers of children with different regional family registries. 
 
 The woman claimed to have given birth to six children within a 10-month period. 
 
 When questioned about how they came to have Maria, the couple gave "constantly changing claims," Thessalia Province Police Director Vassilis Halatsis said. 
 
 Through Interpol, Greece has requested assistance from other European countries. 
 
 Police decided to appeal internationally as the girl looked as if she might be from northern or eastern Europe. 
 
 The case has also brought a response from two families in the UK with long-missing children. 
 
 Ben Needham from Sheffield disappeared aged 21 months while on a family holiday on the Greek island of Kos in 1991. His sister said the discovery of the blonde-haired girl in central Greece gave them "great hope". 
 
 A spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, whose three-year-old daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal in 2007, said the case also gave them hope that she would one day be found alive. ||||| A Greek charity said yesterday that it was pursuing at least 10 "promising leads" – many from parents whose children had gone missing – following a worldwide appeal to help identify a blonde, blue-eyed girl found living in a Roma camp in the country. 
 
 Less than two days after launching the international campaign, the philanthropic organisation Smile of the Child announced that it had been bombarded with more than 10,000 calls and emails from around the world. 
 
 "Through our hotline we've been contacted by thousands of people in the US, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, South Africa and the UK," Panaghiotis Partalis, the charity's international communications officer, told the Guardian. 
 
 "A lot of emails have come through from families whose own children went missing years ago. Based on pictures that we have also received, there are around 10 cases of children who bear a resemblance to the little girl and we are following them up to see if there is any link." 
 
 The girl, who is thought to be about four years old and answers to the name Maria, was discovered last Wednesday when Greek police raided a Roma settlement near Farsala in Larissa, 170 miles north of Athens, in search of weapons and drugs. 
 
 Officers were said to be taken aback when the pale-skinned child appeared in the home of a couple with 13 other offspring who were all dark-skinned. Unable to communicate in Greek, the girl could barely talk. What little she did say was conducted in the Roma dialect. 
 
 In a bid to unearth her identity, Partalis said the charity was also looking for specialists, including an anthropologist, who might be able to determine the child's origins and age. 
 
 "There is still mystery surrounding her age," he said. "We are looking for experts who can examine her teeth and other features to find out exactly how old she is and what her origin may be." 
 
 The charity has also compiled a "profile" of pictures of lookalike children. "We've put together a montage with Maria at the centre that we have passed to the police," he said. "There seems to be a lot of hope in the Swedish press that she is Scandinavian." 
 
 The girl is expected to be released from hospital on Monday, the same day the couple found raising her are due to appear in court on charges of abducting a minor. Police said it was likely they would be imprisoned pending trial. "The father already has a criminal record," said one officer in Thessaly, the region where the child was found. 
 
 DNA tests have proved conclusively that the little girl is not related to the couple – a 40-year-old woman and 39-year-old man. 
 
 Although the suspects have vehemently denied accusations of child smuggling, they have given a range of conflicting stories, telling investigators at first that the girl was found in a blanket at birth, before insisting her biological father was Canadian. Suspicions were further raised when the mother was discovered to have two identities and to have claimed to have given birth to six of her children in the same year. Costas Giannopoulos, who founded Smile of the Child after the death of his own son, said the discovery of the girl had not only shone a light on child trafficking in Greece, but revealed the parlous state of birth registrations with municipal authorities in the crisis-hit nation. 
 
 "There is a huge gap that allows anyone to claim a child as their own," he said. 
 
 On Friday, the parents of Madeleine McCann, the toddler who went missing in Portugal in 2007, said the case was a sign that children who had disappeared could still be found. 
 
 Authorities hope that the discovery of the girl will also help crack the mystery of Ben Needham, the Sheffield boy who went missing at the age of 21 months on the Aegean island of Kos 22 years ago. Ben's mother, Kerry Needham, told ITV: "My family and I are extremely delighted at the news that a four-year-old girl has been found in a gypsy camp in Larissa, Greece. We have always believed that Ben's abduction was gypsy-related and have a long ongoing inquiry in Larissa. We hope that the investigation into Ben's disappearance will now be looked at again." ||||| 1 of 3. A four-year-old girl, found living with a Roma couple in central Greece, is seen in a handout photo distributed by the Greek police and obtained by Reuters October 18, 2013. 
 
 ATHENS | 
 
 ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek police have asked Interpol to help them track down the real parents of a blonde girl with green eyes who was found in a Roma camp in central Greece. 
 
 Known as Maria, the four-year-old was spotted peeking out from under a blanket at a Roma settlement near the town of Farsala during a police sweep on Wednesday for suspected drug trafficking. 
 
 She speaks just a few words in the Roma dialect and Greek, and police think she may be of northern or eastern European origin, possibly from Scandinavia or Bulgaria. 
 
 Police have sent Interpol a file with all the evidence they have on the girl, including DNA samples, to seek a possible match with its records on missing children, a police official said. They have also contacted international groups and charities that deal with lost or abducted children. 
 
 "Mystery - a blonde angel without an identity," top-selling daily Ta Nea wrote on its front page on Saturday. 
 
 Photos released by police of Maria staring blankly at the camera with muddy hands and scruffy pigtails have dominated the media. Parallels were drawn to the case of Briton Madeleine McCann, who vanished while on holiday in Portugal in 2007, when she was three years old. 
 
 DNA tests have shown the couple in the Roma camp with whom Maria was living were not her biological parents. The 40-year-old woman and 39-year-old man have been arrested and charged with abducting a minor, and police are investigating whether the girl was a victim of trafficking. 
 
 CRYING AND FRIGHTENED 
 
 During questioning, the couple gave at least five conflicting accounts of how the child ended up with them, including that she was found outside a supermarket, police said. 
 
 The woman had two different identification documents and other papers suggested the couple had up to 14 children, but six were registered as having been born within less than 10 months. They received 2,790 euros ($3,800) a month in child benefits, a police source said. 
 
 "This has never happened before - to have found the child and to be looking for the parents," said Natalie Karakouliafi of the Smile of the Child charity, which is looking after the girl. In response to an international appeal, it has received more than 5,000 calls since Friday from people looking for their missing children or offering clues. 
 
 The charity received reports that the girl was forced to beg for money in the streets but its director, Costas Giannopoulos, said she was in good health. 
 
 "She was frightened and cried herself to sleep. She is not looking for anyone and she is devoted to play," he told Reuters. "It has shaken everyone and has helped bring to light a major problem - just how easy it is to traffic children". 
 
 Local police chief Vasilis Halastis told Greek TV: "We're always searching for lost children. In this case we're searching for the opposite: the biological, natural parents. This is unprecedented." 
 
 ($1 = 0.7302 euros) 
 
 (Editing by Deepa Babington and Mark Trevelyan)
– The discovery of a mysterious blonde girl at a Roma camp in Greece has spurred more than 10,000 phone calls and emails to the charity trying to identify her. Smile of the Child says it has heard from many parents whose children have gone missing, and it is following up around 10 promising leads, including at least four from the US, the Guardian reports. The girl, who was discovered in the home of a couple with 13 other children, speaks only a Roma dialect and is believed to be around four years old. The couple have been charged with kidnapping and police say they have given at least five different accounts of how the child came to be with them. The Roma community where the girl was found has rallied around the couple, reports the BBC, but social workers suspect the girl was forced to beg in the streets and may have been sexually abused. The charity caring for her says she was "filthy and terrified" when they found her last week but her condition has improved and she is now out of the hospital and playing with other children. "She was frightened and cried herself to sleep," the charity's director tells Reuters. "It has shaken everyone and has helped bring to light a major problem—just how easy it is to traffic children."