Hong Kong, July 29 (DPA) An unemployed Pakistani man has been jailed for life after strangling three prostitutes in a three-day killing spree in Hong Kong, a media report said Wednesday.

Nadeem Razaq, 24, who came to Hong Kong when he was one year old, claimed in police interviews that he murdered the women on the orders of armed debt collectors in Macau, the South China Morning Post newspaper said.

Razaq said the debt collectors wanted him to murder eight women to wipe out a 150,000-Hong-Kong-dollars ($19,230) gambling debt, but he managed to escape after killing the three victims.

He later retracted his confession and said he did not kill anyone.