Pakistani teen still critical, Obama calls attack tragic

Teenaged peace activist Malala Yousufzai, who was shot at by the Taliban, remained in critical condition Thursday. US President Barack Obama called the assault tragic even as her attackers were identified.

Malala will be shifted to Rawalpindi and her condition is not out of danger, Geo News quoted an official as saying Thursday.

“Her condition is not yet out of danger despite improvement. She is being shifted to Rawalpindi,” said Masood Kausar, governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Malala was shot and seriously injured in the country’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province Tuesday when she was returning home from school. Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting that also injured two other girl and has sparked outrage across the world.

Doctors Wednesday removed a bullet that pierced Malala’s head and got lodged in her shoulder.

Asim Bajwa, a senior official, said Malala will be accompanied by her doctors during the transfer. The decision to shift Malala to Rawalpindi was taken by a committee of Pakistani and British doctors.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said that her attackers have been identified and would be brought to justice.

She will not be sent abroad for treatment, said Malik.

US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the Taliban attack.

Obama found the news of the Talibani shooting of 14-year-old Malala “reprehensible, disgusting and tragic”, the White House Wednesday said.

“We strongly condemn the shooting of Malala Yousufzai,” Obama’s spokesperson Jay Carney said.

Condemning the attack on Malala, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said here it was a reminder of the “challenges that girls face” just for speaking out.

Clinton said Wednesday that Malala has been active in speaking out for the right of girls to get an education.

“She’s even blogged about it, and she has been very brave in standing up for the rights of girls in the area where she comes from in Pakistan,” Clinton said in remarks to a group of visiting Girl Scouts in honour of the first-ever International Day of the Girl.

She added that the attack on Malala “reminds us of the challenges that girls face, whether it’s poverty or marginalization or even violence, just for speaking out for their basic rights”.

Recounting the Taliban attack on 14-year-old Malala, Clinton said: “She was attacked and shot by extremists who don’t want girls to have an education and don’t want girls to speak for themselves and don’t want girls to become leaders, who are, for a variety of reasons, threatened by that kind of empowerment”.

“And so they shot Malala, and she’s in critical condition.”

Clinton said: “We should be dedicating our efforts to brave young women, some of whose names we will know and some we will never know, who struggle against tradition and culture and even outright hostility and sometimes violence to pursue their hopes, their God-given potential to have a life of meaning and purpose and make contributions to their families, their communities, their countries, and the world”.

In an opinion piece in Washington Post, former first lady Laura Bush writing under the headline “A girl’s courage challenges us to act” noted “Eleven years ago, America awoke to the barbaric mind-set of the Taliban.”

“Malala is the same age as another writer, a diarist, who inspired many around the world. From her hiding place in Amsterdam, Anne Frank wrote, ‘How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world’,” she said.

“Today, for Malala and the many girls like her, we need not and cannot wait. We must improve their world,” Bush said.