Larnaca: Airport-bound planes and birds are commonly seen in the skies above Cyprus, but only last week there was a report of a UFO spotted over Limassol town and since an earlier article on UFOs in Cyprus, The Gazette has received many accounts from readers of their unexplained encounters.

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Anthony in Nicosia contacted the Gazette to share his experience, "just last week at 10:10pm we had a sighting of a UFO while we were traveling in the Kyrenia area that lasted for two minutes. It was an oblong shape, like a rugby ball on its end and was glowing very bright orange. It came from the coast inland near a village called Catalkoy in small but rapid zigzags then stopped and hovered for approximately 30 seconds before making a smooth ascent at 45 degrees up to the east towards a very bright star. It then disappeared. A friend had sighted a similar event at the same spot a month previously "

It is just the latest in a series of incidents of unidentified objects in our skies. A local TV cameraman posted a clip he filmed on the popular Youtube website of a 'strange craft' in the skies of Limassol.

The three-minute video shows a circular object hovering over the city. The UFO was a bright orange orb, which later changed to a rugby-ball shape.

There have been several sightings of UFOs on the island in the past five years. One of the earliest accounts of a UFO in Cyprus was in 1950, when two American soldiers described a "small, round, bright object flying fast, straight and level for 15-20 seconds across Nicosia".

Last month, a computer programmer and his girlfriend who were on holiday in Paphos had an experience which left them confused and dazed.

The man told a UFO news website, "It happened on Sunday 9th September at 1am. That night my girlfriend and I were lying down on sunbeds staring at the stars. After a while I sat on the sunbed looking and talking to my girlfriend when behind her over the rooftop I saw a circular irregular light moving quite fast. By the time I told her about it, it was already 45 degrees on my right.

She saw it as it was reappearing behind a building and finally it disappeared again behind trees. It moved quite fast and at a constant speed along an east to west straight line."

Last year a resident of Pygra had a similar experience: "The sound of my dogs barking alerted me to something. It was 1.30 in the morning and I headed out to try and discover what they were barking at. I noticed a bright light coming towards me, which then stopped and hovered. With binoculars, I could see it was a triangle-shaped object with amber, green and white lights. It was moving erratically left to right, back and forth - hovering there, observed by me for around 45 minutes. I tried to video it with a powerful zoom but the camera wouldn't operate. I checked the camera by filming other parts of the sky and the house and it operated perfectly. it simply wouldn't let me video the object. This thing then went behind a tree and stayed there."

In 2002, the self-styled Egyptian UFO Hunter, Dr.Ibrahim shot a five-minute video of a UFO above the carpark at Larnaca airport. The film shows a green 'shaking' object and can be seen on his website.

An unidentified flying object was also spotted over Kyrenia in 1998. It was seen on the Nicosia-Kyrenia road by a family from Kyrenia who were on their way home after visiting a friend's house.

They said an object "like a flying saucer" with white revolving lights had appeared around 50-100 metres above their car and that it had then followed them.

In July, a crowd of 100 stunned stargazers brought a UK town centre to a standstill when five mysterious UFOs were spotted hovering in the sky.

Drinkers spilled out of pubs, motorists stopped to gawp and camera-phones were aimed upwards as the five orbs, in a seeming formation, hovered above Stratford-Upon-Avon for half an hour.

The unidentified flying objects lit up the otherwise clear night sky above Shakespeare's birthplace in Warwickshire.

According to multiple surveys over the last several decades and from different countries, 5-7% of people have seen a UFO - equivalent to 15-20 million Americans - and 10-15% know someone who has seen a UFO.

Several hundred thousand UFO sightings have been documented over the last 50 years, and the total number of UFO sightings is estimated to be in the millions.

There are thousands of sightings reported each year. Only a small percentage of those who see a UFO report the sighting.