Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- A Hong Kong prosecutor is in hospital with burns to his face and damage to his left eye after two men threw acid at him outside court yesterday.

Neil Mitchell, 52, was attacked by two men who splashed him with a corrosive liquid as he descended a staircase outside Wan Chai Tower on Hong Kong Island shortly after 1 p.m. He was prosecuting another lawyer for conspiring to obtain HK$10.9 million ($1.4 million) in loans from Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. by deception at the time of the attack.

The liquid was initially reported to have been ink, but Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Kevin Zervos said it was acidic and corrosive.

“He has suffered burns to the left side of his face and damage to his eye and cornea,” Zervos, who has taken over the case Mitchell was prosecuting, said. “He will remain in hospital till the end of the week and is probably going to need some rehabilitation.”

Hong Kong has suffered a number of high-profile acid attacks in the last 18 months. Dozens of people have been injured in four incidents where acid was thrown over crowded streets in the popular shopping district of Mongkok. A 28-year- old man was arrested over the latest incident, in September. The other three, which police believe are unrelated to the fourth, remain unsolved.

Police said they had classified yesterday’s attack as a wounding and were looking for two men aged from 20 to 25 and approximately 165cm in height.

“The men splashed some liquid on the victim and then fled,” said Lawrence Li, an information officer with the Police Public Relations Branch. “There have been no arrests so far. It is still under investigation so we cannot comment at this point.”

The Department of Justice, which hired Mitchell to prosecute the case, condemned the attack on the lawyer.

“Any assault upon any person is a serious matter,” the department said in a release issued yesterday.

“It is a particularly serious matter when such an incident takes place in or in close proximity to our courts and the person assaulted is involved in the administration of justice.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Gentle in Hong Kong at ngentle2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 28, 2009 05:34 EDT