Islamabad : A bullet that pierced the head of child peace campaigner Malala Yousufzai, who was shot by the Taliban, was removed in the early hours of Wednesday, a day when Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani vowed to fight terror “regardless of the cost”.
The bullet was taken out by the doctors in Peshawar Wednesday morning, but Malala was still unconscious, Geo New reported.
Mumtaz, surgeon professor, said the operation was conducted at 2 a.m. and continued until 5 a.m. The bullet that pierced Malala’s head and travelled to her shoulder was successfully taken out, he said.
The girl’s condition was expected to improve.
Malala, Pakistan’s first National Peace Award winner, was shot and seriously injured in the country’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province Tuesday.
Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying they would target her again if she survived because she was “secular-minded”.
She was on her way home from school when an attacker wearing police uniform stopped the school bus and fired at her. Malala was seriously wounded, while two other girls sufferwd light injuries.
The girl received fame in Pakistan and abroad due to her struggle for restoration of peace in Swat area.
When Taliban banned education for females in the district, she not only continued her education but also raised voice for rights of women and children by writing letters to foreign radio stations and newspapers.
Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) quickly turned one of its aircraft into an air-ambulance Tuesday in case the need arose to fly Malala out to Dubai for surgery and treatment.
PIA managing director Junaid Yunus said the makeshift air-ambulance was ready to airlift the critically injured 14-year-old from Peshawar to Dubai.
General Kayani, who Wednesday visited Peshawar to oversee the treatment being given to Malala and to meet her family, strongly condemned the terror attack on the girl, reported Online news agency.
He said the cowards who attacked Malala and her fellow students have shown time and again how little regard they have for human life and how low they can fall in their cruel ambition to impose their twisted ideology upon others.
The army chief said it is not the first time that the Taliban have targeted children.
He said that in attacking Malala, the terrorists have failed to grasp that she is not only an individual, but an icon of courage and hope.
“We wish to bring home a simple message: We refuse to bow before terror. We will fight, regardless of the cost,” the army chief said.
Millions of people prayed for the early recovery of the child peace campaigner.
“With millions of people praying for her life and early recovery, the way she was living in the once militants infested Swat Valley without any proper security measures speaks of how we treat our heroes,” said an article in the Dawn.
Describing her as “the progressive face of Pakistan in general and Swat Valley in particular”, it said that she is today “fighting the most arduous battle of her life”.
“The moot question is when security could be provided to the ruling elite…then why Malala was left at the mercy of militants. Returning from school without any security guard, she was a soft target for those who wanted to eliminate her because of her thinking,” it added.
Lauding Malala, the Dawn article said that her meteoric rise to fame was not because of sheer luck, rather “it was because of her struggle and her candid views regarding what had happened in Swat Valley and how Taliban had inflicted damage on the education sector by blowing up dozens of schools”.
Malala is in the ICU and “millions of people not only in Pakistan but in other parts of the world are praying for her”.
“Hope the prayers of these millions of people would bear fruit and this brave girl would once again be present among her people and striving for the message which she has been preaching for the last over three years,” it added.