Karen Woo was killed by a grenade as she hid in 4x4

Thirty-six-year-old Karen Woo, the British doctor killed in Afghanistan last week, died when one of the gunmen who ambushed her charity team on their way back to Kabul tossed a grenade into the vehicle in which she and another female aid worker were hiding.

The details of her last moments were released yesterday after the sole survivor of the ambush, an Afghan driver called Safiullah, was interviewed by the authorities.

He told how the gunmen struck as the group of eight charity workers and three Afghan helpers were resting after crossing a swollen river. It was about 8 am on Thursday.

According to Safiullah, the team were taking a break in a forested area at the side of the road. An Afghan man who had offered to help them cross the river had just left when 10 gunmen, their faces covered, appeared from nowhere.

Running towards the group, firing their guns in the air, they shouted "Satellite! Satellite!" - demanding they hand over any satellite phones.

Team leader Dr Tom Little, an American optometrist who had worked in Afghanistan since the mid-1970s, shouted "What's happening?"

One of the gunmen knocked him down with a blow from his AK-47. When Little tried to get up, he was shot.

Karen Woo and another female member of the team had jumped inside a 4x4 to hide. They were killed when one of the gunmen tossed a grenade into the vehicle.

The rest of the group were shot one by one, including the team's cook who was hiding under a car.

Safiullah claims he escaped with his life by reciting passes from the Koran to prove he was a Muslim.

When the eight aid workers and two Afghans had been killed, the attackers told associates over a radio: "Everything's finished. We killed them."

The International Assistance Mission, which initially assumed the attack was the work of common bandits, now believes "non-local fighters" were responsible. Safiullah's tesimony backs this up, they say.

According to Safiullah, the lead gunman appeared to be a Pakistani. He yelled "Jadee! Jadee!" - an expression meaning hurry up which is used in several regional languages but is more commonly used in Pakistan and India than Afghanistan.

Safiullah said all the attackers understood Dari and Pashto, the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan, but conversed in Pashaye, a local dialect used only in north-eastern Afghanistan.

At a memorial service for Karen Woo in Kabul on Wednesday evening, her fiance, Mark "Paddy" Smith, said she would not have wanted her friends to dwell on her death.

"Karen would just want us to be strong and carry on her work and that's what we will endeavour to do," he said at the service in the Afghan capital's British Cemetery, where a permanent memorial plaque to the dead aid workers is to be erected. ·