PARENTS were urged to keep their children indoors last night after an horrific attack on a woman by a pack of savage dogs.

Mother-of-three Narinder Kaur was rescued by workers who fought the pack with scaffolding pole.

She was left covered in blood from the vicious attack.

Newsagent Mrs Kaur had been walking to her family run business in Murton, County Durham, at about 11.30am when she was set on by the dogs,

They were a black Staffordshire bull terrier, a brindle dog, believed to be either a boxer or a bull mastiff, and a white Jack Russell outside a site used by pipe- laying contractors Clancy.

Last night local man Ralph Shirley, 55, described the nightmare scene.

"I was driving past when I saw the dogs attack Mrs Kaur so I grabbed a steering wheel lock from my car and went to help her," he said.

While he lashed out at the boxer, snapping his metal lock in two, one of the workers from Clancy's belted the bull terrier with a scaffolding pole - but still they came back for more.

Mrs Kaur was repeatedly mauled by the dogs , leaving her drenched in blood, as her rescuers frantically fought to save the slightly-built 43-year-old.

She suffered severe wounds to her arms legs and neck.

Site foreman David Hall said he could not believe was happening. "It was horrific," he said. "There was blood everywhere and she didn't stand a chance.

"Those dogs were definitely out to kill."

As about half-a-dozen workers continued to fight off the dogs, Mr Hall ran for the site van as project manager Tony O'Toole rang for an ambulance and police.

"I drove the van into one of the dogs and then reversed over it and at the same time another driver hit it from the side," said Mr Hall. "It must have been injured but it still ran off."

It was at this point that the Jack Russell and the other dog ran off, pursued by David in his vehicle.

"I chased it as far as the Dalton Flatts site where I mounted the kerb to try and hit it but it also go away," he said.

Although police said one of the dogs was a bull mastiff some witnesses believed it to be a powerfully-built boxer.

With the ambulance on its way, one of the workers ran to fetch Mrs Kaur's husband, Jeff, and 24-year-old son, Darren, who accompanied her to Sunderland Royal Hospital, where her condition was described last night as "stable but poorly".

Mrs Kaur's eldest son Bill, 25, spoke of the family's anger over the attack.

"We want the owners of these dogs found before anyone else gets hurt," he said.

Inspector Dave Hogg, of Peterlee Police, revealed that extra officers had been drafted in to search for the dogs, and schools had been advised to keep pupils in during break times.

The inspector described Mrs Kaur's ten-minute ordeal as "an horrendous attack, an indiscriminate attack on a defenceless lady."