The word "assailant" is correct and usable in written English.
You use it to describe someone who has attacked or is attacking someone else. For example: "The police apprehended the assailant after he assaulted his victim."
But when a crook waved a pistol in Leonardo Bonucci's face last October, the Juventus defender punched his assailant twice before chasing him up the street.
The assailant : Eric Cantona By Darren Tulett Barefoot and bearded, his long hair swept back, Eric Cantona strides towards me in a red beach-football kit, his imposing physique seeming to fill the corridor of the Paris arena where soon he will receive the biggest ovation of this star-filled night.
The video depicts three friends on a night out, dressing up, drinking, dancing and flirting, before one of them is approached by a hooded assailant outside a nightclub.
The best friend completed his musings on the identity of the assailant with the scissors, bade me goodnight, opened the door and departed, leaving me alone with the audience and a knowing smirk.
The assailant is a black man thought to be in his late 30s, and groundbreaking forensic tests have pinpointed his ancestral DNA to the Windward Islands.
As Rijkaard was being escorted up the touchline towards the dressing rooms by a Dutch team official, Völler broke into a jog, looking for all the world as if he might attack his saliva-spewing assailant and prompt all hell to break loose.
The assailant threw two grenades at Mr Ibrahim's entourage, driving through the dusty plaza that the Iraqi regime created when in 1991 it bulldozed the rebels' hideouts in the old souk.
His assailant was also killed in a shoot-out.
The assailant in Kfar Sava, a 27-year-old man from Nablus, was said to be a member of Mr Arafat's own movement, Fatah.
The interior minister said the cabinet might block internet sites that praised the assailant and curb some demonstrations.
The army apologised.Late that night, a Palestinian assailant killed three Israelis at a restaurant in Tel Aviv.
