Pakistani Activist, 14, Is Shot by Taliban
October 10, 2012 · By ROBERT MACKEY, Agence France-Presse
Pakistani soldiers moved Malala Yousafzai to an army hospital after she was attacked by gunmen in Peshawar on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Taliban in Pakistan¹s Swat Valley took responsibility for the shooting on Tuesday of a 14-year-old activist who is an outspoken advocate of education for girls. The attack on Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head on her way home from school in Mingora, the region¹s main city, outraged many Pakistanis, but a spokesman told a newspaper the group would target the girl again if she survived.
Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban, told Reuters in a telephone interview that Malala was pro-West, she was speaking against the Taliban and she was calling President Obama her idol. He admitted that she was young, but said that she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas, referring to the ethnic group in northwest Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan whose conservative values the Taliban claims to defend.
Another girl, one of two others wounded in the attack, said in a television interview with Pakistan¹s Express News that a man had stopped the school bus and asked which girl was Malala before opening fire.
Pakistan’s Express Tribune reported that doctors at a hospital in Mingora, the region’s main city, said that Malala was “out of danger” because the bullet that struck her skull and came out on the other side and hit her shoulder had not damaged her brain. The newspaper added that the girl was later moved to Peshawar in a Pakistani Army helicopter.
The military’s press office later released photographs of soldiers evacuating Malala and tending to her in another hospital.
