A teenage girl said she thought she was going to die when an attacker stabbed and slashed her in the face in one of two serious assaults in Derry at the weekend.
In another attack a 28-year-old man who tried to break up a fight was stabbed when a crowd of about 20 turned on him. He was stabbed in the back with a screwdriver and suffered a punctured lung.
"He smashed a bottle in my face and when I fell to the ground unconscious, he slashed me in the back," said Amanda Deehan (15), from the Top of the Hill area of Derry's Waterside.
Both assaults happened in the Waterloo Place area of the city centre, an area which a senior RUC officer said was unsafe for his officers to patrol. Supt Peter Sheridan said there had been an explosion of dancing and pub culture in the city at weekends but they had done nothing to try to deal with people when they left these premises.
Speaking at her family home, Amanda, who was in the city centre with her cousin, said her attacker first spat in her face. "We moved away but he followed us. He again spat in my face and I shouted at him to stop. Then he smashed a bottle in my face.
"There was blood all over my clothes and I fell to the ground unconscious. He then jumped on me and slashed my back with the broken bottle. Bouncers from a nearby nightclub saw what was happening and they chased him. They then carried me into the nightclub and called for an ambulance.
"It was the first time I'd ever gone to the city centre at night time during the weekend and I'll never go there again. I thought he was going to kill me," she said.
The Mayor of Derry, Councillor Pat Ramsey, condemned the two assaults. "Something has to be done. It's going on too long," he said.