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Subscribe to RSSAfter being targeted by the Taliban for speaking out about women's rights, Malala Yousafzai remains in the hospital, recovering from surgery to remove a bullet from her neck. NBC's Amna Nawaz reports.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari ordered Tuesday that the young Pakistani activist who was seriously injured in a shooting by the Pakistani Taliban be sent abroad for medical treatment, the website for Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported.
Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Pakistani activist who won international acclaim for her work promoting peace, and two other young girls were shot and seriously injured Tuesday, police and hospital officials said.
Local police and hospital officials told NBC News that Malala was shot after leaving her school in the Swat region.
Official sources told Dawn that the single bullet, which hit Malala's head, had pierced down to her backbone.
“We have thoroughly examined her, she is in critical condition. The bullet traveled from her head and then lodged in the back shoulder, near the neck,” a doctor told the AFP agency, according to Dawn, requesting anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to media.
Gunmen hunted down young Malala Yousafzai at her school, shooting her in the head after she dared to criticize the extremists who are ravaging her country. NBC's Amna Nawaz reports.
“Next three to four days are important for her life. She is in the intensive care unit and semi-conscious, although not on the ventilator,” he added, according to Dawn.
“In such a condition, she immediately needs a sophisticated surgical procedure, which is not possible in the country,” sources told Dawn.
Malala was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize in 2011 for a blog she wrote under a pseudonym for the BBC. She also won the National Peace Prize in Pakistan, was honored with a school named after her, and quickly became an outspoken critic of the Taliban in Pakistan and a public advocate for peace.
In the blog, she chronicled life in the Swat Valley under the brutal and oppressive rule of the local faction of the Pakistani Taliban, who carried out public floggings, hung dead bodies in the streets, and banned education for girls.
AFP
Soldiers take Malala Yousafzai, 14, to an army hospital after a gunman attacked her and two other girls in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Tuesday.
Obama her 'ideal' leader
In early 2011, the militants had added Malala to their hit list.
"We wanted to kill her as she was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban and more important she was calling President Obama as her ideal. She was young but was promoting a Western culture in the Pakhtun populated areas," Ihsanullah Ihsan, the spokesman of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP said Tuesday.
Veronique De Viguerie / Getty Images, file
Malala Yousafzai, pictured here at the age of 12 in March 2009, was undergoing surgery after she was shot twice Tuesday.
The Taliban had made a plan for killing her a year ago but were waiting for an opportunity, he told NBC News.
Malala was initially treated at the Saidu Sharif Teaching Hospital, in Mingora, the main city of Swat, but was airlifted to a hospital in the larger city of Peshawar.
'New radicals': Pakistan's Generation Y battles to shape country's future
A police official, quoting other students who witnessed the shooting, said some people came in a car and stopped in front of the school and then asked them to identify Malala.
"Since the students already knew about threats to Malala Yousufzai's life, therefore they said they didn't know her," the police officer said.
Arshad Arbab / EPA
Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.
But he said Malala was shot when she came out of the school and got in a school van.
Americans ignore 'great risks,' travel to Pakistan to protest US drone strikes
The young girl's stark depictions of daily life in Swat -- as Pakistan’s army carried out a massive military operation against the Taliban in the area -- led her to become the first Pakistani girl nominated for the children's peace prize.
She began writing the diary for the BBC when she was just 11.
In one posting on her BBC blog, she wrote: "My younger brother does not like going to school. He cries while going to school and is jubilant coming back home ... He said that whenever he saw someone he got scared that he might be kidnapped. My brother often prays 'O God bring peace to Swat and if not then bring either the U.S. or China here.'"
A short documentary profiling an 11-year-old Pakistani girl on the last day before the Taliban closed down her school. (By Adam B. Ellick)
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My answer to the Taliban strongholds: turn the Taliban into crispy critters.
This shooting has angered me and to top it off the Taliban are saying that if she survives they will send another hit team.
The Taliban needs to be incinerated from the face of the earth period.
Another thing-Islam as a total movement is not a religion but a way of life. It uses the political, legal and military arm (through terrorism) to infiltrate countries. Make no mistake: the agenda is very clear and when a country is converted to Islam no other religion, spiritual beliefs are allowed. Non believers become second class citizens.
So let us not start getting all mushy about Islam and separate extreme Islamists from regular Islam both are made of the same cloth.
I consider Islam the most dangerous movement in the world today.
http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/2008/03/muslim-takeover-of-west-how-it-works.html
Here it is the time table of Muslim take over for those who think Islam is a "religion of peace".
A time table? I'm Muslim and I should be part of this conspiracy. Why wasn't I informed? Oh yeah. There is no conspiracy for Muslims to take over the world.
Your rants are not very different than the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," except rather than stereotyping the takeover of the world by Jews, you believe it's the "Muslims."
O wow reading some of Thea's comments made me scared
First I want to put out there these people are not Muslim they are so called Muslims they do not go by the words of god and his teaching or the religion and go head try to bring any verse from the Quran and say " owell it says this and this "and twist it and change it to whatever meaning you would like because any biblical text translated to a another language will always be different in some way or another because you have to find words that have simmiler meanings wich can Chang the hole meaning or moral value of the scripture
In every religion there are the true believers and the so called believers that give a crapy name to the hole religion
Just because I start reading a few verses from the bible, torah, quran and preach to people to wheel them in doesn't make me a real Christian or catholic or Jew at that or even Muslim
So the priests who raped boys were beleavers in god, jim jones who made his own religion and preached god and killed thousands of people did he really believe, all Thea's murders and people who do outrages sick thing to children or just anything disturbing that we here on the news like the teacher taking naked pictures of his 3rd grade students, can we really correspond all Thea's sick bastards to a religion?.... Even Osama bin laden who came out with Videos and was saying he was a Muslim and saying Allah over and over makes him a Muslim ..... Hellllll no he's a so called believer who doesn't even follow the damn religion and puts up a fake picture . because in reality,there all misguided cowards, just like the Taliban
Who Finder the week to follow them and pray on the week for there own satisfaction
It's all a power struggle, sick people like this get a high on feeling they have power even if it is a little bit, it makes them feel alive when it makes them sick and disturbing
And all Thea's people posting hateful stuff, what makes you different then Thea's monsters
This girl was advocating for her self and other girls to get a education , and was shot down for it
Wouldn't you say all Thea's wight people going around doing hate crimes right and left to Muslims or women wearing the head scarf or attacking seeks assuming there Muslim is doing the same thing. And seeks don't even believe in god
And just like in ever generation Islam is the target for hatred now, just like the japanis, Chinese, Jews blacks Germans whatever athenacity , Islam is just the hype for now I think it might be for a wile to because of a lot of so called Muslim losers
OK, OK, so the Taliban are monsters, OK?
But, Israel's IDF killers murder Palestinian kids ages 0 to18 24/7 with the best in the US armoury.
So, who are the real savages - really?
TheAZCowBoy, please don't try to justify attempting to murder an innocent girl by saying that it's ok because someone else does it too. Whether its the Taliban, the IDF, the IRA, the KKK or just some nut job who wants to get even with the world for wrongs committed against him real or imagined, it is NOT ok. No matter how they try to rationalize it, it is never ok to commit murder.
For those asking where the protests and outrage was among the people of Pakistan, they've shut down schools and work across the country, and there were vigils and protests throughout. For those who can't distinguish the difference between the general Muslim population and terrorist groups like the Taliban, this just proves your bigotry and/or ignorance.
Well, they haven't had a Predator come in through their living room window as they watched the presidential debates leaving their loved ones spread all over the walls like (human) peanut butter, and still wondering if Green Bay will win this coming Sunday.
How can anyone shoot a child? Don't lead them as much.
1.4m Iraqi's slaughtered by the US in their aggression against the people of Iraq. (22% of them children and infants). 6,000 murdered in the invasion of Panama, some 375,000 murdered by 666 (Reagan's CONTRAS) in Central America in the 1980s. 3.9m murdered by the Great Satan in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. (Like my grandmother used to say: "The skunk doesn't smell under its own tail").
Tens of thousands murdered, maimed and left homeless by the criminal ZioNazi Jews of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank.
Any questions?
how long before you are banned again as a rereg troll?
Ohhhh, but the 'truth will set you free,' remember that one Pilgrim?
BTW: "Have you smelled under 'your' tail? LOL!
Still wearing the white sheets with the pointy hat?
To target children in the name of religion-who thinks God would do this??!!! This does show the power that this girl has in Pakistan and that the Taliban are afraid of her. I pray with all my heart that this is the impetus for Pakistanis to join together and to stand up for their basic rights from the evils of the Taliban.
'a pearl before swine'........woops. A diamond, a gift brought down by ignorance and extreme beliefs. I pray that she will recover to continue her brilliant work..............
OMG, look at what those Muslim terrorists have done this time!!! Yup, them's terrible people if you read the US Jewish owned and operated media daily 'Muslim terrorists' reports. In Gaza during Israel's Operation Cast Lead Palestinan mothers waiving the flag of surrender in one hand and holding thier infants in the other were gunned down by Israels IDF finest. The, up to their kiesters in cold blood scumbags, 'the most moral military in the world' - or just garden variety killers deserving to be sent back to Auschwitz, Sobibor, the Warsaw Ghetto - and other Nazi 5-star Jewish only resorts. In Gaza liquid fire (US supplied, of course) white phosphorus munitions was dropped on the elementry schools of Biet Hanoun and others, burning young boys and girls, ages 7-15 to a crisp; leaving others with holes where their eyes used to be; leaving class rooms filled with pools of blood and the smell of burnt hair and charred flesh. In classrooms many of the teachers drapped themselves over children's bodies as they tried to protect them against the horrific liquid inferno. And what did the low life Jews of the FOX JEWS NETWORK, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC report to the world - NADA! This is not a post to defend the equally brutal Taliban. But, it is a post to remind you that US UAL Predators are turning AF/PAK men, women and children into piles of shredded flesh, crushed bones and terror. And is the US Jewish media reporting this to the people of the US and the world - not on your life - of course not! It wouldn't feel good to realize that the Great Satan is the lowest of the low life genociders on the planet and the racist AmericKKKan people are no better than the Pol Plots and Attila-the-Hun' fans of the short and long ago past. US (Suit and tie) terrorist Ambassador Steven's died for AmeriKKKa's crimes against the people of Libya. Like Gaddafi his body was dragged rhrough the streets of Bengahzi - much like Gaddafi's body was brutalized by AmeriKKKa's recruited al-Qaida 'rebel's. Welcome to PAY BACKS AmeriKKKa. It's almost like Shakespere in the new millennium, huh Pilgrims? 'Poetic justice some call it!'
There is but one true GOD, and Jesus, is his son! Muhammad is a false Prophet! May God watch over this little girl!
Will you people please shut up about the Crusades?! They ended a thousand years ago and shooting 14-year old girls, or beheading 6-year old little girls "to make a point" are not the result of the Crusades or even vengeance for what happened back then. That's one of the problems in the world today. No one is willing forgive and forget. If we (in the U.S.) had the mentality of the Muslim extremists, we would still be bombing Tokyo, or fighting Spain because they sank the Maine in Havana Harbor, but instead we buy Japanese cars by the millions. Give it a rest. Your excuses for killing little kids make me sick.
That whole area of the world is a hell hole. I hope that if not America, some country offers her and her family asylum so they may live their lives in peace. She is going to be a target in her homeland for the rest of her life and although I know she probably won't get any justice, the idiots who done this deserve ten times worse for shooting a child.
Interesting though, brave of her classmates to say they didn't know her rather than point her out. Just goes to show that children are better people than most adults!
Well, yet again, we see one more reason why the Taliban, Al-Qaida, and the entire pedophile-worshipping religion of Islam needs to be STAMPED off the face of the earth. We aren't going to survive otherwise.
Gabe, I have no issue with what you are saying about criminals like the Taliban and al-Qaida, but you comments about Islam are ignorant and utterly dispicable. In case you weren't aware, there were a significant number of Catholic priests who were the pedophiles. Is that supposed to reflect negatively on the teachings of Jesus?
And way to go trying to apply 21st century US state laws to a time when people didn't go to school and were considered ready to marry after reaching the age of puberty.
Interesting, 420, infants-to-teens, massacrd by the 'most moral military in the world,' (Vomit-Vomit), the Jewish IDF war criminal heathens of Israel in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead and the continuing airstrikes and killing of civilian Palestinian men, women and children 24/7 - and not a peep' from the US Jewish owned and operated corporate media. Way to go Jew York Times!!!
Look up GirlWithABook on facebook for a great movement to honor how brave this little girl was and emphasize the importance of education for women!