Thousands of dollars have been donated to fund set up to support the family of a woman murdered in the San Bernardino shooting.

The GoFundMe page for the family of Benneta Betbadal has received nearly $30,000 in just 14 hours towards a target of $50,000.

Betbadal was shot and killed by precisely the kind of Islamic extremists she left Iran to escape after the persecution of Christians that followed the Iranian revolution.

Betbadal, born in 1969, arrived in America aged 18, settling first in New York City and then moving to Rialto, Califonia where she married Arlen Verdehyou, a police officer and had three children, now aged just 10, 12 and 15.

She had gained a degree in chemistry in th US and was working as an inspector for the San Bernardino County Health Department. "She loved her job, her community, and her country. Her greatest love, however, was for her husband, her children, and her large extended family," the GoFundMe page says. 

She left the house on Wednesday morning, excited about a presentation she was due to give to her supervisors and coworkers at their annual meeting. Page creator Ken Paulson writes: "It is the ultimate irony that her life would be stolen from her that day by what appears to be the same type of extremism that she fled so many years ago.

This is fund will be used solely to benefit Benneta's children, as they and the family adapt to life without her.