US historian who tried to save Afghanistan's heritage dies

American historian Nancy Hatch Dupree, who dedicated most of her life to preserving Afghanistan's heritage, died in a Kabul hospital yesterday aged 89.

Dupree first arrived in the Afghan capital in 1962 as the wife of a diplomat. In the city she met her second husband, the late American archaeologist Louis Dupree, and developed a lifelong passion for the Muslim country.

Over the next five decades she travelled throughout the country, wrote five guidebooks and documented the war-torn nation's past.

Her death was confirmed by Waheed Wafa, executive director of the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University where tens of thousands of documents preserved by the Duprees are kept.

Many Afghans took to Twitter to pay tribute to Dupree -- sometimes referred to as Afghanistan's "grandmother" -- who was widely respected for her efforts to safeguard the country's history and culture.

"Very saddened by the death of #NancyDupree. Afghans value and respect her services of decades for #Afghanistan. Nancy will be missed! RIP," wrote Afghanistan's Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.