The search for the missing body of a British tourist killed in the Luxor massacre was last night concentrating on the South American country of Colombia.

The assistant deputy coroner of West Yorkshire, Mr James Turnbull, said he had been told by embassy officials from all countries with victims involved in the massacre that Ms Karina Turner's body was not in Japan, Switzerland, Bulgaria, or Germany.

The only other country where bodies were sent after the massacre of tourists by Muslim extremists, two weeks ago, was Colombia.

The mix-up over the body of Ms Turner, 24, was yet another blow for the family from Ripponden, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, who last week discovered her mother Joan, 53, had been mistakenly sent to Switzerland.

Ms Turner's five-year-old daughter Shaunnah was also killed in the tragedy, and the catalogue of errors has left both bodies at the Halifax funeral parlour - originally thought to be those of her mother and grandmother - still to be identified.

Mr Turnbull said of Ms Turner's body: ''There is still the possibility of Columbia, I like to be optimistic, but lines of communication may be slow in some countries.''

A Foreign Office spokesman said dental records had been swapped with all countries with victims of the massacre. He added that Mrs Turner's body was expected to be returned to this country in the next few days.

The spokesman also said Baroness Symons, Minister with Responsibility for Consular Matters, had sent a message of sympathy to the Turner family.

Diplomats at the British Embassy in Egypt were urgently contacting their counterparts at other embassies to try to get to the root of the confusion.

A check-list of all those murdered, and the countries to which they had been sent, has been drawn up. The list, with six Britons, included Bulgarian-born naturalised British air hostess Sylvia Wilder. Her remains were buried in Bulgaria last Sunday.

It also listed 36 Swiss, four Germans, one Colombian, and 10 Japanese. The remainder of the 68 dead were the militant Islamic gunmen who carried out the massacre.

Initial identification was carried out by representatives from tour operators First Choice, but it was not possible to cross check with passports, which were not being carried at the time.

A family member and a close friend carried out second identifications of the bodies when they arrived at Heathrow Airport, last weekend.

Mr Turnbull said they were ''quite presentable and identifiable'' but the emotion of the situation could lead people to make a wrong identification.

The two other British victims, Mr George Wigham and his wife Ivy, were buried last week in their home village of Swanley, Kent, after a funeral service in the church where they were married 49 years ago.