Glass-coated kite string fatally slits 19-year-old's throat

Islamabad: A kite string fatally slit a motorcyclist's throat in the latest of a series of tragedies that have prompted a kite-flying ban in Pujab, police said yesterday.

Nauman Nazir, a 19-year-old student, was riding through a bazaar on Friday in the city of Rawalpindi near Islamabad, when he was cut by the galss-coated string, said local police official Mohammad Khalid.

Kite flyers in Pakistan often use string made of wire or coated with ground glass for "duelling", trying to cross and cut an opponent's string or damage the other kite, often after betting on the outcome.

After Nazir's accident passers-by immediately took him to a hospital, but doctors pronounced him dead on arrival due to blood loss, said Mohammed Ilyas who lives in the area.

Pakistan's most populous province, Punjab, banned the manufacture, sale and flying of kites days ago after sharp kite strings caused several deaths. But the popular pastime has continued.

Kite strings have been blamed for the deaths of at least 10 people, two of them children, over the past three weeks in Punjab.

The ban came ahead of the annual spring kite-flying festival of Basant in the eastern city of Lahore last weekend.