A man repeatedly stabbed during a terrifying drunken attack by his estranged wife told today of his fear that she might strike again.

Joe Meskiri suffered a collapsed lung and had to have emergency surgery after he was attacked by his estranged wife Lynda at the home they once shared in Clayton, Bradford.

Prosecutor Suzanne Smales told Bradford Crown Court yesterday how Mr Meskiri had tried to contact a relative for help but his wife cut the phone line with one of the two knives she was carrying.

He then fled from the house and tried to climb a neighbour's fence to get away.

Mrs Smales said Meskiri had earlier shouted that she was going to kill her husband and as she ran after him she was making stabbing motions towards him.

"When he reached the fence dividing the properties he had to halt in order to climb it and he felt stabs to his back including a particularly hard stab,'' she said.

Mr Meskiri managed to get to the neighbour's house and he was rushed to hospital where he underwent an operation to stop internal bleeding into his chest.

As a result of the attack last November, Mr Meskiri was kept in hospital for six days.

"I'm still suffering from the wounds she gave me," he said. "I'm on painkiller tablets, blood pressure tablets and sleeping pills because I'm having nightmares about being attacked all over again.

"I still live in fear that she will come and try to do something like this again."

Meskiri, who had moved out of their Clayton home a few weeks before the attack, was originally charged with wounding her husband with intent to do him grievous bodily harm, but at a hearing in June the CPS accepted her guilty plea to the lesser charge of unlawful wounding.

Mrs Smales said the plea had been accepted on the basis that Meskiri had had a lot to drink that night and although her recollection of the events was hazy she did accept the prosecution's version.

But Judge Alistair McCallum refused to sentence Lynda Meskiri yesterday because the Crown Prosecution Service was unable to confirm whether her husband had been told about allegations that she had endured an abusive relationship with him that she was going to make in mitigation.

Meskiri's barrister Ben Crosland explained that he had made it clear when the guilty plea was entered that his client would be alleging abuse.

But Judge McCallum expressed concern that Mr Meskiri, who was not in court, might only hear about the accusations of abuse for the first time in a newspaper report and he criticised the CPS for not keeping him informed.

''More and more the prosecution, under great pressure I accept, is not contacting the victims to let them know what's going on,'' said Judge McCallum.

''The victims are not even being told the day on which the person who attacked them is being sentenced so they can be in court to hear what's said.''

Meskiri, who now lives in Long Ridge, Brighouse, was granted bail so that the CPS can contact Mr Meskiri and Judge McCallum ordered that she should be sentenced by the judge who accepted her guilty plea in June.

''I am sorry this matter has not been properly investigated so we can sentence today,'' he told her.

''But it is important that everybody's side is heard in a case like this.''

Following the hearing Mr Meskiri was also critical that the CPS had not kept him informed of the allegations his former wife was making against him

He said: "I think it's disgusting that they haven't let me know what's going on. I can't believe they haven't sentenced her and I can't believe they haven't told me what she's been saying about me.

"I was never violent to her, she's just making it all up to get an easier sentence."

A CPS spokesman said he was unable to comment until it had concluded its own inquiry into the case.