A terrified dad has told how four masked men took his young daughters hostage with knives and threatened to “kill” his son before ransacking his home.
Mohammed Ali, 39, woke to “panicked screams” from his girls, aged seven and 12, as robbers burst through his front door with machetes, a meat cleaver and a brick.
The HGV driver first saw two of the intruders on the stairs of his semi-detached four-bed home as another held a knife against his daughters’ throats in their living room.
And when his son emerged from his upstairs bedroom seconds later, one of the men chilling yelled “Kill him! Kill him!” before advancing towards the 18-year-old.
Mohammed said he pushed the lad back into his bedroom and ran to a bathroom, where they took refuge while the robbers hacked at the doors with their machetes.
After five minutes, the brutes finally fled the property and stole his white Seat Leon car from his driveway when they found his keys.
Mohammed, who didn’t know why his home was targeted, said he had been left “broken” by the incident - adding he felt like he’d “failed” his family.
He said: “My daughter said one of them had a knife and he was saying, ‘It’s all your dad’s fault, be f*cking quiet,’ and was putting a knife to her neck.
“They all had gloves and everything, but you could see their eyes through the balaclava – and their voice, I could never forget it.
“I’ve not slept since. My family is broken. My kids wouldn’t come home.
“It was my daughter’s birthday yesterday, and literally everything is spoiled and I don’t know what to do or what to say to them. I feel like I’ve failed them.”
Mohammed said he'd gone to bed at 9.30 pm on May 9, leaving his youngest son, who is five, and two daughters watching the TV at their home in Oldham, Grtr. Manchester.
His make-up artist wife Michelle Dunkley, 40, had forgotten her keys when she left the house for work in the evening so he’d unlocked the door before heading upstairs.
But at 11 pm, he heard one of his daughters utter a high-pitched scream before finding two masked men on the stairs holding metre-long machetes.
He said: “It wasn’t a scream where the kids were fighting. This was a panicked scream, a worried scream. I knew as a parent this was not normal.
“As I was trying to get down the stairs, I was faced by three guys in balaclavas. Two were on the stairs, one at the bottom, and one had my kids downstairs.
“I started screaming: “Get out! Get out!”. They started swearing at me. My son had the room next to the stairs, and when he came out, they said: “Kill him! kill him!”
“I pushed him into his room and closed the door, and they started coming up the stairs. I went to the bathroom, which was right behind me.
“I was just screaming: “Make sure they don’t get to you!”
“They started hacking at the doors with the machetes, and while they were hacking it, the third guy was ransacking my house.”
Mohammed said he spent a terrifying five minutes holding the door shut, hoping the men wouldn’t break through.
