A victim of the Tunisia beach massacre was identified by her glittery nail varnish after being shot in the neck and chest, an inquest has heard.

Trudy Jones, 51, from Gwent, south Wales, was holidaying with friends when she was killed.

An inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice in London is to hear evidence in relation to each of the 30 British victims murdered in the atrocity.

Jones is the first victim the inquest heard details about. She had been on holiday with a number of friends, including Carol Anne Powell, when gunman Seifeddine Rezgui killed 38 tourists at the five-star Riu Imperial Marhaba hotel in Sousse on 26 June 2015.

On the morning of her death she had gone for breakfast with Powell, before both women got ready to sunbathe. Jones made her way to the beach while Powell sat by the pool.

In a statement, Powell said: “At around 12 or 12.30pm I heard the most terrible explosion. The explosion came from behind me, towards the beach area. It was the loudest noise you could ever hear.”

She added that she initially thought it was an explosion in a beach kitchen, and then crowds of people appeared, running away from the area. “I wanted to run towards the beach to check on Trudy, but people were running towards me shouting ‘go, go’. I started to run towards the hotel with the crowds of people.”

Powell described getting caught up in the chaos and eventually deciding to play dead in a hotel car park. She said a man picked her up and put her on his shoulders – while she continued to play dead – before carrying her to the safety of a neighbouring hotel. “I am desperate to find out who he is because he saved me,” she said.

In the following days Powell attended the mortuary where the victims’ bodies were being held. Samantha Leek QC, counsel to the inquest, said: “She [Powell] looked at photographs. She initially did not see anyone who looked like Trudy. A couple of hours later she saw a photograph that looked like her.”

The inquest heard that Powell was then shown a body which corresponded with that picture. Leek said: “She recognised the glittery nail varnish on her toes.”

The court was told a postmortem examination was carried out in Tunisia and another in the UK, where Jones was also identified through dental records. Both gave Jones’s cause of death as a single gunshot wound to the neck and chest.

Powell had also been on holiday with Mark Hornby. Describing how aware he had been of the terror threat in Tunisia, he said: “I did not check the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website as I was not aware of it. The terror risk was not brought to our attention by [holiday company] Thomson.”

He added: “I assumed we would be safe on our holiday, especially as the hotel was five stars.”

Jones’s family described the carer in a statement to the inquest. They said: “She was a beautiful person inside and out. She would put everyone’s happiness before her own. Making others happy made her happy.”

The statement continued: “You only had to meet her once and you would never forget her. She was an amazing lady. The world was a much better place with her in it. Truly one of a kind.”

Jones was killed 48 hours before she was due to return home to Blackwood in south Wales.