An urgent search was under way last night for a new-born baby who was snatched from hospital when she was just three hours old.
A blonde woman took baby Karli from beside her mother Tanya as she lay in bed at Basildon General Hospital in Essex, recovering from a Caesarean delivery.
As detectives studied videotape from closed-circuit television cameras thought to have caught the baby snatcher, police confirmed that the woman was seen in the maternity ward earlier yesterday.
Doctors warned that baby Karli was particularly at risk as she had not been fed since birth and was clad only in a hospital gown on a very cold day.
The incident has refocused attention on maternity unit security, which was supposed to have been tightened after past cases involving Alexandra Griffiths, taken from St Thomas's Hospital, central London, in 1990, and Abbie Humphries, taken from Nottingham's Queen Elizabeth Medical Centre in 1994.
Both babies were recovered after more than two weeks.
After yesterday's incident, at around 1 p.m., police immediately set up roadblocks and used a helicopter to search for Karli.
Police said a woman in the next cubicle saw the intruder take Karli and alerted midwives, who gave chase but lost the woman in the hospital carpark.
Within minutes police sealed off the area around Basildon General Hospital and said later they were hunting a black Renault Laguna-type car seen leaving the area at speed.
The baby's mother, from Vange in Basildon, was said to be "extremely distressed".
Police later named the parents of the missing baby as Karl and Tanya Hawthorne. The couple, who are not married, have been in a long-term relationship and both use the surname Hawthorne. They have a four-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl. The father was with the mother in hospital yesterday at the time of the birth.
Their plight brought immediate sympathy from Mrs Karen Humphries, whose baby Abbie was missing for 15 days.
Mrs Humphries (36), who is expecting her third child in the new year but plans to have it at home, said: "I am angry that his has happened again. It should not happen so easily. People should not be able to walk onto a maternity unit."
As well as roadblocks, Essex police alerted patrols at the Dartford Tunnel between Essex and Kent, and also ports and airports.
They are looking for a woman of average build with long blonde hair - though it could have been a wig - and perhaps wearing glasses.
Mr Mark Purcell, a spokesman for Basildon Hospital, said the woman had "slipped through" the hospital's security system.
Detective Supt David Bright, who is leading the hunt, said Karli appeared to have been chosen at random by her abductor, as she was in the first cot she encountered in the recovery room.
He said: "It is the mother's 30th birthday today. It is wonderful to give birth to a child but then she has lost it within three hours."
Mr Bright said the black Renault Laguna was seen speeding away from the hospital driving down the wrong side of the road with its lights on.
He said the registration of the car is believed to contain the letters "MFR" and "P" and he said it was driven by a man with a female passenger.
Baby Karli was wearing a white baby smock, marked with the words Basildon and Thurrock Linen Services General Hospital, and had a blanket wrapped round her at the time she was taken.
(Corrected repetition - clarifying name and relationship of couple in light of later information)
Regulars at the pub where the parents of the baby often go had been planning a celebratory drink yesterday evening after hearing that the little girl had been born.
But the mood was sombre in the Barge, in Vange, after the news that the infant had been stolen within hours of her birth.
Mrs Geraldine Evans said that Karli's father Karl had come into the pub at lunchtime to announce the good news and had been brimming over with joy.
She said: "As he walked in through the door, he pulled back his jacket and he had a badge on underneath saying, `I'm the dad of a baby girl.' He was absolutely chuffed to bits.
"He told us the baby had been born and how much she weighed and we were all going to have a party here tonight for them."
She said that the father, believed to be a building labourer, was there at around 12.45 p.m., within minutes of Karli's disappearance.
Mrs Evans added: "We were expecting to be having a drink with him to celebrate this evening and instead we are all devastated.
"They are a delightful family, absolutely lovely. All the time Tanya was carrying the baby, they were so looking forward to it.
"It was going to be such a wanted baby, such a loved baby.
"We heard about it on the telly and said, `God, I hope it's not Tanya's.' But we all knew in our hearts it was, and as the details came out we realised it was hers.
"I just wanted to do something. I wanted to phone up and offer my help, but you just feel so helpless. All we can do is keep our eyes open and our ears to the ground.
"They are such a well-liked couple that people will be looking out for them. So, God willing, the little girl will be found."