A JEALOUS attacker who almost killed her victim when a long-running feud ended in bloodshed has been jailed for nine years.

Katie Hull launched the near-deadly assault months after her neighbour April Watt had an affair with her boyfriend while they were temporarily parted.

Hull, 32, recruited friend Katrina Gill, 28, to help carry out the late-night attack at the home of her 24-year-old love-rival in Hartlepool last summer.

Terrified Miss Watt was punched and kicked before being slashed across the throat with a piece of broken glass after Hull had smashed it in her face.

Hull was yesterday jailed for the public's protection after Teesside Crown Court heard she has 167 offences on her criminal record, including nine for violence.

Heavily-pregnant Hull appeared in court via a video-link from Low Newton Prison near Durham, where she has been since the end of her trial in March.

She was found guilty of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, while the jury convicted Gill of the lesser charge of unlawful wounding.

Gill, formerly from Hartlepool, but now of Hargrove Road, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, was jailed for 15 months by Recorder Peter Johnson.

The judge told her he accepted she played a subordinate role, but had taken part in the planning of the attack and helped trick their way into the house.

He branded Hull a danger and said an extended sentence for public protection was necessary because of her lengthy record for violent offences.

The court heard that she once threw a cup of hot tea at a prison officer, and smashed a "bottled" a man in the face after smashing it over his head in a pub.

Ian Mullarkey, mitigating, said the mother-to-be would be "significantly punished" by having her child taken from her within hours of giving birth behind bars.

Gill's barrister, Joseph Spencer, described her as "easily influenced by others" and was "deeply remorseful" for her part in the savage attack.

Trouble flared in the early hours of August 7 last year, when Gill travelled from Harrogate to stay with Hull at her home in Charterhouse Street, Hartlepool.

The warring women appeared to have called a truce after Gill's intervention, and they were all sharing a drink at Miss Watt's home with her new partner.

Mr Recorder Johnson ruled that the attack on Miss Watt - weeks after threats were made - was planned and the apparent peacemaking by Gill was a ruse.

Hull will be released halfway through her sentence and will spend the remainder of the nine years on licence, with an extra four years after that.

She sobbed as the judge said: "It seems to me, if you sensed betrayal by your partner or problems with another, you would not hesitate to use violence."