This must be what overkill looks like: of the 35 stab and cut wounds that Dr Yuri Vasin found when he performed the autopsy, any one of 18 stab wounds to Haindongo's chest could have killed her.

In addition to that, another wound to her neck, where her jugular vein was cut, could also have killed her, Judge President Petrus Damaseb heard in the High Court in Windhoek this week.

He heard this as teacher Immanuel Kashala, who was Haindongo's boyfriend, went on trial for her murder.

Kashala (34) pleaded not guilty when the trial started on Monday.

His defence counsel, Patience Daringo, has told the court that his defence is that he, too, was attacked and stabbed by an unknown assailant in Haindongo's room on the day she was killed.

But that was not what Kashala told a Magistrate at Oshakati on March 18 2003, just after he was discharged from hospital where he had been treated for knife wounds to his chest.

Judge Damaseb ruled on Tuesday that an alleged confession that Kashala made in the Oshakati court would be allowed as evidence in his trial.

Kashala has since claimed that the statement he made to the Magistrate was false and given under duress.

Still, that statement is now evidence before court - and according to it, Kashala killed Haindongo during an early-morning quarrel.

Kashala had told the Magistrate, Johanna Kefas, that he had spent a peaceful night with Haindongo in her room, and that he left there at around 06h30 on the morning of March 12 2003.

Upon realising that he had left a key in the room, he returned to fetch it, he related in the statement.

Haindongo then told him that she had received a call from another woman who said that she, Haindongo, had been with the woman's boyfriend on Valentine's Day, Kashala told the Magistrate.

"I told her that is it possible if that date we slept here," Kashala's statement reads.

"From there we start quarrelling," he continued.

"While we were quarrelling I was standing.

Then I came to sit on the bed, she pushed me and I fell on the wardrobe.

I also push her and she fell on the bed.

From there she took a bread knife, waving it, saying 'do not come to me'.

"She started to move back, then I grab her, the moment I grab her, she cut me on the index finger.

"I took a knife from her by force.

I wanted also to cut her.

It missed her, it landed on the wall and got broken.

I went in my pocket.

There was a knife from my jean shorts which I was wearing and I stab her once in her back and in her limbs plus minus three knives.

I cannot remember how many times exactly I stab her.

First when I stab her in her back she said darling why do you do such kind of things to me."

Kashala continued: "She fell down on the floor when I stab her on her limbs.

When I look at her I realise that she is about to die."

He said he then took off most of his clothes and stabbed himself in the chest three times with the same knife.

He could not remember what happened after that, since he lost consciousness.

He then stabbed himself three times in the chest, Kashala told Magistrate Johanna Kefas.

Before she took down the statement from Kashala, she had asked him why he wanted to make the statement to her, Kefas told the court.

He replied: "Because I wanted to harm my girlfriend.

Unfortunately I killed her."

Daringo had no questions for Kefas during cross-examination after she had read the contents of the statement to the court on Tuesday.

The defence lawyer explained to the court that this was because Kashala was denying the contents of the statement.

Some of the evidence that State advocate Innocentia Nyoni added to the prosecution's case against Kashala on Wednesday came from an alleged eyewitness to the murder.

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