A TEENAGE boy was hit in the face with a machete and had the blade shoved in his stomach during a terrifying robbery.

The 16-year-old lives elsewhere but was socialising with a large group of friends at the shelter in Magnolia Fields, Colchester, when they were approached by four men wearing balaclavas.

One began scraping the metal structure with the blade and then isolated one of the boys telling him to hand over a hat and jacket he was wearing.

The boy tried to flee and then put up a fight but one of the attackers swung the knife, striking him in the face.

Another of them pushed a blade into his stomach but without enough force to break the skin.

They took other items and the boy, who doesn’t live in the area, ran to a nearby Co-op who called the police.

The boy’s father said he had been left severely shaken up what had happened on Wednesday evening.

“It dawned on him the evening after when he said to himself that he could have died and he was in very real danger,” he said.

“They wanted to do real damage and luckily when they hit him in the face he was struck with the flat part of the blade rather than the edge.

“After he had the knife in his stomach he thought he was bleeding.

“The victims aren’t bad people and aren’t involved in drugs or anything like that - they are just innocent teenagers who were trying to socialise.

“When they arrived in seemed like a scene from The Purge.

“They began scraping the shelter and asking who had food and who wanted food.

“We can’t stand for it.”

It is understood other teenagers in the group were hurt, including a boy who was stabbed.

The boy’s dad said he believed the robbers were from London.

He said: “My son got dropped off for 20 minutes to see his friends and this happened.

“From what I have been told there have been county lines operating in Colchester for some time.

“They come down in groups of four or five and the ones active at the moment seem to be particularly nasty.”

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call police on 101 quoting crime reference 1070 of Wednesday.

Police believe it could be linked to another incident in Greenstead on the same night when a man in his 20s and a friend were threatened.

One of them was stabbed in the back but fortunately his injuries were not serious.

The suspects on that occasion - which happened at a similar time - were also described as four black men.