Musician's Fingers Cut Off in Attack

A British saxophonist studying in Australia may never play again after having three fingers chopped off in an attack by armed men.

Doctors say that Phil Evans, 20, will never recover the full use of his left hand.

Two men in balaclavas broke into his house in Brisbane on Monday night, tying up and gagging his two flatmates with electrical tape and dousing one with petrol.

Armed with a pistol and hatchet, they watched television for two hours while they waited for Mr Evans to return and grabbed him as he came through the front door.

They taped his left hand to a table and severed the little, ring and middle fingers and left his index finger connected by a strip of tissue.

A nine-hour operation at the Royal Brisbane hospital succeeded in reattaching three fingers, but his little finger could not be saved. Surgeon Peter Rowan told ABC radio: "You almost never regain the full use of the fingers ... the ultimate function is never normal, it is just a matter of how good it becomes."

Police suggested that loan sharks could have been behind the attack, but his family blamed it on mistaken identity. Mr Evans had been playing the saxophone for 10 years and had been living in Brisbane since 2000. He was studying music at Queensland University of Technology. His mother said he would now be giving the instrument away.

Less than a month ago a New Zealand backpacker was allegedly tortured for 16 hours in Brisbane by criminals trying to extract his credit card pin number.