‘The flame of her life has been cruelly extinguished’

THE first funeral for the victims of last week’s London bombings took place yesterday afternoon. Shahara Islam, 20, from Plaistow, east London, was buried at a private service.

A statement from her family paid tribute to a simple girl who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It read: "Today our dear daughter, cause of our joy and light of our eyes our Shahara is returning to her Lord an innocent and blood-stained martyr. She was an Eastender, a Londoner and British, but above all, a true Muslim and proud to be so.

"She was a simple girl, from a simple family who led a simple life. Unfortunately, she was at the wrong place at the wrong time on that unfortunate day.

"The flame of her life has been cruelly extinguished from this beautiful young woman in her prime, who had the whole world ahead of her. We are not finding it easy to come to terms to our immeasurable loss, our sorrow, our grief.

"It has been a painful week, not only for us, but for all those.... who, like us, suffered similar loss of their dear ones. Today our thoughts are with them all."

Earlier, prayers had been said for Shahara at a mosque in Whitechapel, east London. Addressing several thousand worshippers, the mosque's imam described the bombings as heinous.

Shaykh Abdul-Qayyum said: "Those people who committed the atrocities in London last week, when many innocent people were killed and injured, have abandoned justice and resorted to a heinous crime."