A YOUNG mother has been scarred for life in an unprovoked doorstep knife attack by a man.

Tracey Wanley, 23, needed 50 stitches and spent a week in hospital after the assault.

She answered a knock on the door to a man with a scarf wrapped around his face at 6pm on November 26.

She was bundled to the floor before her face and hands were repeatedly slashed.

The man fled, leaving her daughters, Tara, six, and Melisssa, four, screaming.

Recovering at her home in North Shields, North Tyneside, she said: "The kids were hysterical and just didn't know what was going on.

"My eldest daughter went into the bathroom and wrapped toilet paper around her hand and held it to one side of my face and then did the same again to the other side."

Tracey managed to telephone police and ambulance before being taken to North Tyneside General Hospital.

Police are treating the attack, which left the mum in hospital for a week, as an isolated incident.

The trauma has left her two daughters needing counselling. Tracey said: "I feel as if I am looking over my shoulder all the time and it has destroyed my two little girls. I am a quiet person and haven't done anything to anyone.

"It is a horrible thing to do to someone, especially in front of two young children, and it just keeps going through my mind."

Detective Sergeant Ian Mills, from Northumbria Police, said: "This was a particularly nasty attack which as yet has no motive."