A Cyprus court has extended for another two days the detention of a man suspected in the killings of two women after police connected him to another woman who disappeared 16 months ago.

The state-run Cyprus News Agency said investigators on Thursday told the court that a witness testified the suspect had photographs of 31-year-old Maricar Valtez Arquiola's temporary residence permit that were taken the day she disappeared in December 2017.

The suspect, a 35 year-old Cypriot military officer, admitted to investigators under questioning that he met Arquiola the day before she vanished.

Authorities on Thursday continued searching an abandoned, flooded mineshaft where the body of 38-year-old Marry Rose Tiburcio was discovered on April 14. The body of another unidentified Asian woman was found in the mineshaft six days later.

Tiburcio's six-year-old daughter remains missing.