An accountant was stabbed in the stomach after refusing to hand over his mobile phone to two muggers.

Tim Lee was left fighting to stay conscious after he was attacked while on his lunch break in Bradford city centre. He used his first aid knowledge and put a credit card over a two centimetre wound in his stomach to staunch the blood loss.

He passed out in a doorway after the attack in Tetley Street on Wednesday between 1.30pm and 1.45pm but then managed to drag himself to work where colleagues called an ambulance. The 19-year-old from Huddersfield had only been working in Bradford for a week when he was attacked.

His ordeal began in Sunbridge Road when the men, both about 20, ordered him to hand over his mobile phone as he spoke to a friend. He fought them and ran, but they chased him into Tetley Street.

He said: "As they caught up with me I felt a couple of punches in my back. I swung out and hit one of them, but they pulled my coat over my head and trapped my arms. They got a few more punches in then I felt this pin-prick in my stomach. I heard one of them swear, and then they ran off.

"I'd felt the handle of the knife during the struggle, but when I looked down my shirt was soaked in blood. I started to go hot and cold and felt a tingling feeling in my body. I've done a first-aid training course so I recognised the symptoms of shock, but then I passed out in a doorway. Everything kept going black but I was fighting to stay conscious and got help from the receptionist."

On the same day, street robber Dean Healey, 23, from Brixton, became the first to get a "deterrent" sentence for beating up a lad of 16 and stealing his phone and wallet. His sentence followed an order to judges by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, to get tough on soaring mobile thefts, warning that, in future,they could expect a minimum of 18 months and up to five years if they used violence.

Detective Constable Steve Berry, of Bradford South CID, said: "This was a vicious, cowardly and unprovoked attack. If the stabbing had been any higher it could have hit an artery."

The knifeman was Asian, 5ft 10ins, of slim to medium build and clean shaven. He wore a black woolly hat and a black padded jacket with a white circular emblem similar to the London Underground symbol but with a white background and a black bar.

His accomplice, also Asian, was 5ft 11ins tall, of stocky build and clean shaven. He wore oblong, silver-framed glasses, a tight white lycra hat with a bright green motif like a duck's beak and a large baggy white ice hockey-type shirt with the same green motif on the front.

Witnesses are asked to contact DC Berry on 01274 376459