There have been several sightings of UFOs in the skies above Cyprus during past few weeks, with the latest incident being witnessed last night.

A married couple from Paralimni contacted the Famagusta Gazette to report a series of reddish circular beams which could be seen for about 10 minutes in the skies above Dherinya.

Their account was backed up by another eyewitness who said the lights moved and even circled around each other before disappearing.

The bizarre incident occurred just before 11pm and is just the latest in a series of incidents of unidentified objects in our skies.

Over the past six months similar red and orange lights in the sky have been spotted in Ireland, the USA, France, Luxembourg, Germany and Mexico.

Only last November a UFO was spotted above Limassol town and since an earlier article on UFOs in Cyprus, the Famagusta Gazette has received over a dozen accounts from readers of their unexplained encounters.

Anthony in Nicosia contacted the Famagusta Gazette last year to share his experience.

"We had a sighting of a UFO while we were travelling 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 "

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".

In 2007, a computer programmer and his girlfriend who were on holiday in Paphos had an experience which left them confused and dazed.

"It happened on Sunday 9th September at 1am. That night my girlfriend and I were lying down on sun beds staring at the stars. After a while I sat on the sun bed 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," he said

"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," he recalled.

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

An unidentified flying object was 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.

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.