TWO men suffered stab wounds in separate incidents in Blackburn over the weekend.

Detectives from Blackburn CID are investigating the unrelated incidents, which happened in the Infirmary and Stansfeld Road areas on Friday night and early hours of yesterday morning.

A 25-year-old man, named locally as John Watson, suffered a ‘severe laceration’ above his knee, following a dispute on the corner of Infirmary Street and Abraham Street at 12.45am on Saturday.

Police arrested a man at the scene.

Mr Watson needed ‘lots of stitches’ and was treated at Royal Blackburn Hospital.

Miroslaw Wojtkowiak, 49, of Infirmary Street, has been charged with unlawful wounding.

One neighbour who saw Mr Watson said his injuries were ‘terrible’.

She said: “It was about 12.45am when I heard a commotion outside so I went out to see what was happening.

“A man came round the corner on to Abraham Street with his leg slashed very deeply.

"I tried to dress it with a bandage until the ambulance came. It looked really nasty.”

In the second incident, which happened shortly after 5.15pm on Friday, two men were involved in a ‘verbal and physical dispute’ in the street, which led to a 42-year-old man suffering an ‘incision wound’ in his abdomen.

He needed surgery to treat a knife wound to his small intestine and remains in hospital.

A 17-year-old local man was arrested on suspicion of wounding and has been bailed.

One local resident, aged 30, who didn’t want to be named, said: “I saw two men walked past together. They disappeared round the corner, but then I saw one of them run off.

“The second man re-apeared and just said ‘call me an ambulance, I’ve been stabbed’.

“But when I went inside to phone 999 he walked off.”

Detective Inspector Claire Holbrook said the incidents appeared 'to be the result of ongoing disputes by individuals known to each other'.