A TERRIFIED pensioner attacked by a drug-crazed thug as she was asleep in bed today said: "I thought I was going to die."

Great-grandmother Annie Fielding was punched in the face, tipped onto her bedroom floor and dragged by her ankles in her sheltered flat in Halliwell. "It was like a nightmare," she said. "He would have killed me if he hadn't got the money from under my pillow. It is a wonder I am still here."

The attacker told Annie -- who is just 4ft 11ins tall -- he wanted the cash for drugs.

And in a separate attack in Kearsley a 77-year-old pensioner was attacked and robbed of money she was saving to buy a mobility scooter.

The brutality of the attack on great-grandmother Annie, though, has shocked Bolton detectives.

The attacker beat her so viciously that her face was left swollen black and blue, her body is covered in bruises and her arms were grabbed so tightly that his hand prints are still visible.

Recovering from her ordeal with relatives in Blackpool, the 85-year-old widow told how she had gone to bed early on Sunday evening but had just got off to sleep around midnight when she awoke to find a man looming over her. Annie, who will be 86 in two weeks, had been planning to go on holiday and had taken the £700, she had been saving for months, to bed with her for safekeeping, tucking it under her pillow.

"At first I thought he was a relation of mine because he looks a bit like him, but then I realised he wasn't and he pushed me," she said.

The thug had forced his way into the flat through an insecure window and had ransacked the rest of Annie's home before confronting her in her bedroom. Annie, who worked as a auxiliary nurse for 16 years until her retirement, told the attacker at first that she didn't have any money, but he soon found it after tipping up her mattress.

"I screamed and screamed so hard that I thought I must have woken someone, but no one came," she said.

After grabbing the money the attacker ran off but Annie, believing he was still in the flat, was desperate to escape and tried to clamber out of a window, attracting the attention of a man walking his dog.

She was taken to the Royal Bolton Hospital for treatment, where her daughter June Grundy met her.

Mrs Grundy said: "She looks a mess but I think she's angry more than anything. He is a coward to do something like this to an old lady."

Mrs Grundy said her mother, despite having two strokes and suffering from asthma and high blood pressure, is still fiercely independent.

But she said it was still too soon to say whether Annie could cope with the idea of returning to the flat.

The attacker is aged around 20 and talks with a local accent.

Det Insp John Chadwick, of Astley Bridge CID, said: "It is an abominable Crime. But next time it could be more serious."

The victim of the second attack was barged into a wall by a teenager after she answered her door.

Sarah Bowers, aged 77, of Manor Street, Kearsley, was robbed of several hundred pounds -- money she had saved towards buying a mobility scooter.

Mrs Bowers said: "I did not have my chain on the door, which I normally do, because I was feeling sleepy.

"When I opened it, the boy was rubbing his hands and asking to be let in.

"He pushed me into the side of the toilet wall, then went into the living room like a shot.

"When I got there, he was pacing around.

"I said to him to get out. I didn't realise until afterwards that he had taken my bag."

Mrs Bowers suffers from crippling arthritis and has had a hip replacement which has left her virtually a prisoner in her own home.

The theft on Sunday afternoon was the second in two days in the same row of bungalows.

On Friday afternoon, a purse containing £50 was taken after a burglar walked into a home.

It has led for calls for a warden by Mrs Bowers' daughter Beryl Hall, and the other residents of the 12 bungalows.

And there is a demand for fencing around bedrooms.

Mrs Hall said: "They feel vulnerable. Many are stuck inside and feel they cannot even open the door or a window to let in some air for fear of what might happen."

A spokesman for Bolton Council has advised the residents to be extra vigilant.

He said: "The homes have been fitted with peepholes and the front and back doors have had yale and mortice locks fitted.

"We would remind people not to leave doors unlocked, even in the day.

"The council has asked the community policeman to visit the residents and offer anti-crime advice."

Anyone with information can contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.