A blind man feared for his life when a gang of men armed with hammers tried to break their way into his home in the early hours of Sunday.

Nicholas Bonney, 48, was alone in bed at his home in Beatty Avenue, Gillingham, when he was woken by the sound of frenzied banging on his front door at 3am.

Scared, Mr Bonney opened his bedroom window to find out what was happening and was met with a barrage of abuse.

He said: “To be honest I feared for my life. If they had got in I think I would have been going out in a body bag."

They were like a pack of animals.”

Mr Bonney said he could distinguish four men and from the sound of the attack he could tell that at least two of them were armed with hammers.

They were trying to break down his front door but when that defeated them they smashed his front windows and ripped down guttering.

They then took hammers to cars in the street before jumping into a car and speeding off.

The attack left round hammer-shaped holes in the front door, the front windows smashed and cars outside the house damaged.

Mr Bonney said: “I’m not usually frightened, but this time was different.

“By the way they were hammering on the door and shouting, I knew if they got in they were going to do some real damage. They weren’t messing about. Luckily the front door held

up.”

Mr Bonney, who cannot work because he is registered blind, lives in the house with his 21-year-old son Mitchell, who was celebrating a friend’s birthday at the time of the attack.

The incident was witnessed by Mr Bonney’s neighbours who were all shocked by the aggression of the attack.

Clare Garbutt, who lives nearby, said: “It was terrible. There were four men, they were really smashing his house up. One tried to climb up the drain pipe to his window. I called the police straight away.”

A spokesman for Kent Police said there had been incidents of damage in the road.

He said: “We were called to Beatty Avenue at 3.03am to reports of youths causing damage to cars and a house.”