The search for missing Tullamore woman Fiona Pender will resume this morning.
Members of the Defence Forces joined gardaí to form a 30-strong search team in the area around Monicknew yesterday.
A two-day search was conducted for Ms Pender (25) in the same area in May after a cross bearing Ms Pender's name was found in a picnic area near Mountrath. The excavation ended without finding any trace of her remains.
The crude wooden cross, measuring about 0.76m (2.5ft) high and bearing the words "Fiona Pender RIP", was found by walkers in the Monicknew woods, in the parish of Camross, by the Slieve Bloom mountains.
Officially the case has remained a missing person's inquiry but since her disappearance no evidence has emerged to suggest she is still alive. Ms Pender was seven months pregnant at the time and had bought clothes for her baby. She had shown no signs of planning to leave the area.
Ms Pender went missing on the morning of August 23rd, 1996. A part-time model and hairdresser, she was last seen at the apartment where she lived with her partner at Church Street, Tullamore, Co Offaly.
Supt Kevin Donohue of the Garda Press Office said at the scene yesterday that following the search in May, a soil expert from Britain had been called in and it had been decided that a full-scale search of a wider area was merited.
Metal detectors are being used in the current search as Ms Pender had had two metal pins inserted in her arm following an accident.
Once again the Garda and the Pender family are calling for anyone with information to come forward.