Pakistani police arrest suspects in schoolgirl shooting (+video)
Pakistani police say they have arrested a number of suspects in the shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai, who promoted education for girls and criticized the Taliban.
(Page 2 of 2)
Malala wrote about these practices in a journal for the BBC under a pseudonym when she was just 11. After the Taliban were pushed out of the valley in 2009 by the Pakistani military, she became even more outspoken in advocating for girls' education. She appeared frequently in the media and was given one of the country's highest honors for civilians for her bravery.
Skip to next paragraph
Fazlullah, along with much of the Swat Taliban's top leadership, escaped the offensive and is believed to be operating from a base in eastern Afghanistan and sending fighters back across the border to attack northwest Pakistan.
Pakistanis across the country held services to pray for her recovery Friday. Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf visited the hospital in Rawalpindi where she's being treated to pay his respects and check on her condition.
The school she attended in the town of Mingora in the Swat Valley also reopened. The atmosphere was grim as children and teachers tried to come to terms with what happened to their star pupil who was shot in a bus roughly 300 meters (yards) from the school.
Police were deployed around the school, but many students still stayed away.
"We have decided to open the school after two days to overcome the fear among our students that gripped them due to the attack," said one of the teachers, Zafar Ali Khan.
The school is owned and operated by the teenage activist's father, who takes great pride in his daughter's accomplishments and is a champion of education for girls.
The girl was initially airlifted from Mingora to a military hospital in the frontier city of Peshawar, where doctors removed a bullet from her neck. On Thursday, she was transferred to a hospital in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani army is headquartered near the capital, Islamabad.
Maj. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa said she is being kept on a ventilator and is in stable condition. Bajwa said the bullet entered her head and went into her neck toward her spine, but it was too soon to say whether she had any significant head injury.
"Her blood pressure is normal. Heartbeat is normal, and thanks to God, her condition is satisfactory," Bajwa said.
___
Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed and Zarar Khan in Rawalpindi, Adil Jawad in Karachi, Rebecca Santana in Islamabad and Anwarullah Khan in Khar contributed to this report.
Previous
Become part of the Monitor community