LOS ANGELES - R&B singer Rihanna broke her silence on Friday about the night her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown attacked her, saying he had bitten her, put her in a headlock and left her bleeding and swollen.

'It wasn't the same person that says 'I love you.' It was not those...eyes,' Rihanna, 21, told Diane Sawyer in an interview on ABC television's Good Morning America show. 'He had...no soul in his eyes. Just blank...He was clearly blacked out. There was no person when I looked at him.'

Rihanna said the attacks started with an argument over a text message Brown received while they were driving home from an industry party. She said: 'I couldn't take it that he kept lying to me. And he couldn't take it that I wouldn't drop it. And...it was ugly.'

She acknowledged police reports that Brown bit her, put her in a head lock until she had trouble breathing, and punched her several times in the eye. 'I fended him off with my feet...but it was not like, it was not like a fight with each other. I just...I really just wanted it to stop.'

Rihanna said although her wounds had long healed, she had flashbacks and scars inside. 'The thing that men don't realise when they hit a woman, it's...the face, the broken arm, the black eye, it's going to heal. That's not the problem. It's the scar inside. You flashback...you...you remember all the time. It comes back to you whether you like it or not. And it's painful. So I don't think he understood that.' -- REUTERS