(CNN) -- Risking their lives to help disadvantaged Afghans became almost a norm for Tom and Libby Little.
"We raised our three daughters through what was, at times, just hell," Libby Little said. "A hundred rockets a day was a good day".
Family members lived underground to avoid bombings, she said. Yet they stayed out of a love for the people and a passion for providing eye care for the needy.
But violence prevailed on Thursday.
Tom Little, a New York optometrist, was among 10 people killed by gunmen in Badakhshan, a remote northeastern region of the country. The mostly foreign members of a medical team were robbed and shot one-by-one on a remote road. Their bodies were transferred to Kabul early Sunday, authorities said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
"He died right where he loved to be -- and that was doing eye care in remote areas," Little said from her home in New York. "Our daughters are missing him terribly. But I think their feeling is, too, that this is a real passion that he had".
It was the remote areas of Afghanistan, Little said, where the need for her husband's services was often greatest. CNN
