Nur Jehan was shot in the stomach, leg, knee and arm in Gadap and left for dead by her cousins, who accused her of having sex with a young man.

Lying in a government hospital ward protected by armed policemen, she told Reuters how she had been driven to Gadap, to be executed.

She said she crawled out of the ditch onto a road to scream for help from a passer-by.

”They will try to kill me again,” said the waif-like girl.

She also feared for the lives of her parents and siblings, who were also kidnapped by her attackers.

Nur Jehan was declared a “kari”, or black woman, by her cousins who accused her of having sexual relations with a young man in Mirgoldop, a village in Balochistan where her father was a farmer.

Investigating police officer Raees Ahmed Ghani said her cousins killed the man with whom she was accused of having sex.

Fearing for his daughter's life, Nur Jehan's father moved the family to Karachi after she was declared a “kari”.

But on April 19, Nur Jehan was kidnapped and shot.

”I fear for my father who didn't want to kill me when the relatives declared me a kari,” she said.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says an average of 1,000 women are killed every year in Pakistan in the name of family honour.

Most of these women are killed by their husbands and male relatives after being accused of having sex outside marriage, but commission chairman Iqbal Haider said the custom was generally carried out to settle old enmities, such as property and marital disputes.

The government enacted a law last year banning honour killings.—Reuters