The fiance of Karen Woo, the British doctor killed in the ambush of aid workers in northern Afghanistan, had the harrowing task today of identifying her body just two weeks before they were due to wed.
The remains of Woo and the bodies of nine other aid workers, including six Americans and a German, were flown back by helicopter to Kabul where many of them will be buried in the city's only Christian graveyard.
Mark "Paddy" Smith said he wanted the chance to say goodbye to his 36-year-old fiancee, whom he had been due to marry this month at the Chelsea registry office in London.
"I just wanted to say goodbye to my baby bear," he said. "I just wanted to make sure that she hadn't been beaten or brutalised."
The former army officer, who works in Kabul, said there were no signs that she had been mistreated. Medical staff said she had been shot twice.
In a statement, Woo's family described her as a "true hero". Dismissing Taliban allegations that the group had been trying to convert Afghans to Christianity, they said her "motivation for going to Afghanistan was purely humanitarian".
They added: "She wanted the world to know there was more than a war going on in Afghanistan, that people were not getting their basic needs met. She wanted the ordinary people of Afghanistan, especially the women and children, to be able to receive healthcare."
The group were ambushed in the relatively peaceful Badakhshan province by about 10 bearded gunmen as they were returning to Kabul from a two-week mission organised by the Christian charity International Assistance Mission (IAM) to provide medical care to impoverished villages in neighbouring Nuristan.
Local police said they were robbed, lined up and then shot one by one.
Smith said Woo, to whom he had become engaged after a "whirlwind romance", had been nervous in the run-up to her departure, but he had supported her decision to go.
"This was the trip of a lifetime," he said. "Not many people are going to get the chance to trek into Nuristan and deliver healthcare to people who have probably never had it before."
William Hague, the foreign secretary, denounced the murder of Woo and her colleagues as a "deplorable and cowardly act". The US ambassador to Kabul called the attack "gut-wrenching".
Dirk Frans, the IAM executive director, said he believed that many of the international members of the team would be buried in the "British cemetery", the small walled graveyard where soldiers killed during the second Anglo-Afghan war of 1879 were first buried.
Also flown back to the capital was the sole survivor of the attack, the group's Afghan driver, who has been named only as Saifullah. He told police he was spared from the firing squad and later released after pleading that he was a Muslim and crying out verses from the Qur'an.
A team of 10 policeman spent today investigating the heavily forested area where the bodies were discovered. It lies on the border between Badakhshan and Barg-e-Mittal, one of the most volatile districts in Afghanistan, where US troops have been forced to abandon a base.
Nato was unable to confirm reports that a US special forces team had been dispatched to hunt down the killers. With six US citizens among the dead, FBI officers will as a matter of course be involved in the investigation.
A US official said they were likely to play a leading role given the limited capacity of Afghan police.
The Afghan interior ministry said it was still too early to say who was responsible for the attack.
Both the Taliban and Hizb-e-Islami, an insurgent group affiliated to the Taliban who are active in the area where the 10 were killed, have claimed responsibility. But the Taliban's statements have been inconsistent and were issued only after the attack had reached the attention of the national media.
Frans has repeatedly said he believes his team were killed by bandits only interested in robbing their victims.