AMBULANCE crews were kept busier in Ipswich than the bigger city of Norwich, during New Year celebrations.Paramedics from the East Anglian Ambulance Trust were only called to three assaults in the city of Norwich, yet three times as many people as that ended up fighting instead of partying in Ipswich.

AMBULANCE crews were kept busier in Ipswich than the bigger city of Norwich, during New Year celebrations.

Paramedics from the East Anglian Ambulance Trust were only called to three assaults in the city of Norwich, yet three times as many people as that ended up fighting instead of partying in Ipswich.

An ambulance spokesman said that between 9.30pm on New Year's Eve and 4am New Year's Day, there were 15 calls to help assault victims in Suffolk, including nine in Ipswich.

There were a total of 57 call-outs to assaults in the whole region of Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire.

The spokesman said: "The calls were mostly as a result of people drinking to excess, and fun nights out degenerating into trouble. There were also a lot of domestic assaults.

"There do not appear to be any serious injuries, and not every call needed us to take someone to hospital."

But he added that the total number of call-outs to assaults, has increased from 41 when 2001 was welcomed in, and just 14 a year ago.

The assaults in Ipswich included a man hit by a bottle in Shamrock Avenue at 12.58am on New Year's Day when two casualties were taken to hospital, and a man who received a head injury outside a kebab shop at 12.59am from where the patient then ran off.

A woman was uninjured by an assault on Stoke Bridge at 1.07am.