The Shooting of Malala Yousafzai, the Girl Who Wanted to Go to School

Basharat Peer, writing for The New Yorker:

On Tuesday afternoon, Taliban militants attacked and seriously injured Malala Yousafzai, a fourteen-year-old campaigner for education for girls in Mingora, a town in Swat Valley, in Pakistan’s North Western Frontier Province. Malala was returning home from school when the men attacked; a fellow-student and a teacher were injured as well. “A bullet struck her head, but her brain is safe,” a doctor told the Express Tribune newspaper. […] A Pakistani Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, claimed responsibility and threatened to attack her again, if she survives: “She was pro-West, she was speaking against the Taliban and she was calling President Obama her idol.” He added, “She was young but she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas.”

★ Wednesday, 10 October 2012