A man has been jailed for 12 months for stabbing his partner in the back in a drunken row at their Bradford home.

Svajunas Buta, 36, pleaded guilty to unlawfully wounding Ausra Zilguziene with a kitchen knife after trouble flared at the house they shared in Whetley Hill, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Buta called an ambulance at 7.30pm on May 20 and confessed to a paramedic that he had injured Miss Zilguziene, prosecutor Michael Collins said yesterday.

A broken kitchen knife was found in a bin at the property.

The Lithuanian nationals, who had been in the UK for 18 months, had a violent relationship and were prone to drinking heavily, the court heard.

Buta picked up a cheese knife and made a stabbing motion to show the paramedic what he had done, Mr Collins said.

Miss Zilguziene was treated in Bradford Royal Infirmary and had made a good recovery. She said her boyfriend had hit and stabbed her after he had been drinking.

She refused to give further details and declined to release her medical records to the police.

Buta told the police he did not know how his partner came to be injured. He agreed he might have caused the wound during an argument.

His solicitor advocate, Ray Singh, said Miss Zilguziene had previously stabbed Buta in the abdomen.

Both had been drinking that evening and he threw her out of the house.

When she was let back in, she picked up the knife and was stabbed in the struggle. Buta did not intend to seriously injure her and he called for an ambulance.

The couple had kept in touch while he was remanded in custody and intended to move back to Lithuania with their children when he was released from prison.

Mr Singh said things had not gone well for them in the UK. Work had been hard to find and both had been drinking to excess.