Pakistan offers bounty for attackers of Malala

PESHAWAR - Agence France-Presse

A reward of more than $100,000 has been set by authorities in Pakistan for the capture of the Taliban gunman who shot a 14-year-old girl in the head, as international outrage grew at the shooting.

Malala Yousafzai, is in intensive care after being shot in daylight on a school bus on Oct. 9, in an assassination attempt that has appalled a country where thousands have died at the hands of Taliban. It took place in Mingora, the main town of the Swat valley in Pakistan’s northwest, where Yousafzai had campaigned for the right to an education during a two-year Taliban insurgency which the army said it had crushed in 2009. On Oct. 10 doctors successfully performed a three-hour operation to remove a bullet lodged near her shoulder, where it moved after entering her head, in a military hospital in Peshawar. Obama described the shooting as “reprehensible and disgusting and tragic.” U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon also expressed horror at the attack on Yousafzai.

Malala won international recognition for highlighting Taliban atrocities in Swat with a blog for the BBC three years ago, when Taliban burned girls’ schools and terrorized the valley. Her struggle resonated with tens of thousands of girls denied an education by Islamist militants across northwest Pakistan, where the government has been fighting local Taliban since 2007. She received the first national peace award from the Pakistani government last year.