Didim became the UFO sighting capital of Turkey when several people reported seeing strange lights ın the skies.

The strange yellowish melon-shaped ball was spotted by the Police Academy in Yeşilkent, while regulars at the Ark Cafe Bar, in Hunters Valley, spotted the same UFO-style lights at about 9.30pm last Saturday night.

Phil and Lorraine Quibell said they spotted the strange lights heading towards them but hundreds of meters off the ground as they walked on the Yeşilkent road, close to the police academy at about 9.30pm.

They described how the melon-shaped object was moving fast and in a straight line before swerving towards the police academy direction and towards the sea before disappearing over the horizon.

Mr Quibell, aged 52, formerly from Preston, said the object was a bright sun colour at the top but faded to a yellowish-moonlight colour below.

There was no noise coming from ıt either before or after they had seen it.

He said: "It was something that I had never experienced in my life and I am still trying to explain it away rationally 48 hours after we had seen it.

"But both of us have said that we have never seen anything like it in our lives."

The UFO-sighting ironically comes nearly 60 years to the day when the unidentified flying object phenomena began.

Mr Quibell said: "There were two guards at the police academy who saw it and they were looking in the air and could not believe it. The object did not have wings or landing lights so it was definitely not a plane.

"It was probably the size of a plane. It is very difficult to explain it. I only wish I had taken my camera with me. I watched the object for what seemed a few minutes but may have been only seconds before it veered away and out to sea."

Meanwhile, Mark and Alana Weatherall , who were with children Paige and Josh, had been with friends at the Ark Bar when they spotted the bright light over the Yeşilkent area at about the same time.

Alana said: "It was like a bright light but nothing like a plane or a helicopter. It seemed to hover for a number of seconds and burn like a white ball of light and then it just faded out altogether."

Mark added: "What surprised us was that it seemed to go vertically up from its original position. It was a weird experience but it definitely wasn't a plane. It must have been a UFO."