A skull found in Belgium has turned out to belong to a girl from the Limburg village of Stein who went missing 30 years ago, police have said.

A recent DNA match with a profile in a Belgian database has shown that the skull, found a year into her disappearance, is that of 18-year-old Angelique Hendrix.

Police are treating the case as murder and have put up a €30,000 reward for information that leads to the killer.

Angelique Hendrix was last seen by her little brother when they went out cycling on July 13 1990. She told him she wanted to continue on her own and sent him back home.

On May 20 a skull was found in Maasmechelen, just over the Belgian border. DNA from the skull was later added to the Interpol I-Familia database which collects data from relatives of missing persons.

Apart from the match, additional investigation has shown the skull definitely belongs to Angelique, police said. It is the first time a person missing in the Netherlands has been identified in this way.

The girl did not figure in the new appeal launched by Interpol which includes 46 unidentified women in six European countries, 11 of whom were found in the Netherlands.