Malala Yousufzai's courageous blogging against the Taliban regime made this 14-year-old Pakistani girl well known but on Tuesday, she was fatally shot.
The News, a Pakistani daily, reported late Tuesday that a bullet is still lodged in her head and arrangements were being made by the government to transport Malala abroad for emergency surgery that could not be performed at the military hospital in Peshawar.
A Taliban gunman walked up to a bus taking children home from school in Pakistan's volatile Swat Valley and shot and wounded a 14-year-old activist known for championing the education of girls and publicizing atrocities committed by the Taliban.
In her blog, Malala Yousufzai 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.
In 2009, the government agreed to a ceasefire with the Taliban in Swat, effectively recognizing insurgent control of the valley whose lakes and mountains had long been a tourist attraction.
The Taliban set up courts, executed residents and closed girls' schools, including the one that Yousufzai attended. A documentary team filmed her weeping as she explained her ambition to be a doctor.
"My friend came to me and said, 'for God's sake, answer me honestly, is our school going to be attacked by the Taliban?'," Yousufzai, then 11, wrote in a blog published by the BBC.
"During the morning assembly we were told not to wear colorful clothes as the Taliban would object."
