Edinburgh woman among 12 victims of suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan AN Edinburgh woman working in Afghanistan has been killed after a suicide bomber ploughed a car into the vehicle she was travelling in. Jeni Ayris, 47, dies after suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan Ms Ayris had only been in Afghanistan for a month and was due to return home Ms Ayris co-ran a cafe called Ndebele in Tollcross area of Edinburgh Jeni Ayris died alongside 11 fellow aviation workers when a female insurgent rammed a car laden with explosives into their minibus as they drove to Kabul airport yesterday. The 47-year-old wrote a tragic last message on Twitter just weeks before she died, asking: "I am back in Afghanistan and wonder what lies before me this time." The Islamist group Hezb-e-Islami has claimed responsibility for the attack. The group said the attack was in retaliation for the controversial American film lampooning the Prophet Mohammad which has sparked turmoil across the Muslim world. Ms Ayris had been in Afghanistan for little more than a month and was due to return home to see her sister Patricia and friends in Scotland this weekend. She previously ran a café called Ndebele on Home Street in the Tollcross area before moving into the aviation industry. Friends described paid tribute to a "great cook who loved entertaining" and a passionate sailor who enjoyed boating on the Firth of Forth. Ms Ayris, who was born in South Africa and lived in Scotland for more than 20 years, gaining British citizenship, had been working in Afghanistan for just over a year as a customer relations manager for aviation firm Air Charter Services. The firm organises private flights for charities and NGOs into and out of the country. "She loved her job," said friend Richard Kellett, a restaurant manager and former Army captain in the Scots Guards. She would go out there for three months at a time and come home for one. She was due to come home this weekend. She loved it out there and always looked forward to going back when she came home on leave. He said Ms Ayris had no immediate family apart from sister Patricia, who he said was "distraught" over her death. Ms Ayris and a partner opened Ndebele in Edinburgh several years ago, serving South African food. Patricia got a call from the company only this morning telling her her sister had been killed in a roadside bomb. It wasn't until later that she found out it was a suicide blast. Patricia is distraught. Jeni was her only family and she cannot come to terms with the violent manner in which her sister was killed. She was a wonderful woman and a wonderful friend. She loved sailing and spent time sailing in the Firth of Forth and on the West Coast of Scotland. She was a great cook and loved entertaining, dinners and parties at her house were always great fun. She was an amazing friend who could always be relied upon to help you out of any situation no matter how difficult it might be. She always had a great positive energy and a buzz about her. A Foreign Office spokesman said today: "We are aware of the incident in Kabul and are consular staff are liasing with partners on the ground and Afghan authorities to establish more details." The bomber was named by Afghan insurgents as Fatima, 22, who was reportedly wearing a suicide vest and blew herself up on a large avenue northwest of the city centre near the airport. Mohammad Zahir, the criminal director for the Kabul police department, said eight South Africans believed to be foreign aviation company workers died in the blast and ten Afghan bystanders were wounded. The other person killed was believed to be Afghan - possibly a driver or translator for the group. The explosion, which went off in front of a petrol station, was so powerful it hurled the minibus about 50 metres (46 yards). Reports from the scene said at least six bodies lay next to the destroyed mini-van. Eight Afghan workers were also said to have been injured in the blast. An eyewitness at the scene said he was waiting for a bus to go to work at 6.45am when he saw a small white sedan ram into the mini-bus. "The explosion was so powerful and loud that I could not hear anything for ten minutes," said Abdullah Shah, a teacher waiting at a bus stop. It was early and there wasn't much traffic. The bombing came a day after hundreds of Afghans burned cars and threw rocks at a U.S. military base in the capital in a demonstration against the anti-Islam film. One police vehicle was burned by the mob before they finally dispersed around midday yesterday. Hizb-i-Islami is led by former warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The group has recently sought to participate in a so-far fruitless peace and reconciliation effort led by President Hamid Karzai. As part of the group's effort, it offered a peace plan that called for a broad-based government. Hizb-i-Islami is a radical Islamist militia that has thousands of fighters and followers across the north and east of Afghanistan. Its 65-year-old leader is a former Afghan prime minister and one-time U.S. ally who is now listed as a terrorist by Washington. The Taliban have also threatened to increase their attacks against foreign targets to avenge the controversial film Taliban fighters last week attacked a large British base in southern Afghanistan, killed two U.S. Marines and destroyed six fighter jets. Nato forces killed 14 insurgents and captured another who participated in the attack. In a torrent of violence blamed on the film last week, the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in an attack in Benghazi. U.S. and other foreign embassies were stormed in cities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East by furious Muslims. At least nine other people were killed. The news will raise fears that anger over the film will feed into deteriorating security as the U.S. and other Western countries try to protect their forces from a rash of so-called insider attacks by Afghan colleagues. The U.S. has sent ships, extra troops and special forces to protect U.S. interests and citizens in the Middle East, while a number of its embassies have evacuated staff and are on high alert for trouble. Despite Obama's efforts early in his tenure to improve relations with the Arab and Muslim world, the violence adds to a host of problems including the continued US military involvement in Afghanistan, Iran's nuclear programme, the Syrian civil war and the fall-out from the Arab Spring revolts.