RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Oct 13, (Agencies): A Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban showed signs of improvement by moving her limbs Saturday, the military said, though she remains unconscious and on a ventilator.
The shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who campaigned for the right to an education, has been denounced worldwide and by the Pakistani authorities, who have offered a reward of more than $100,000 for the capture of her attackers.
“The sedation given to Malala was reduced today so that neurosurgeons could do their clinical assessment and as a result of it Malala responded and moved her hands and feet,” military spokesman Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa said.
“It is a positive development,” Bajwa told a press conference near Army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, close to the capital Islamabad, where Malala is being treated in a military hospital.
Stable
“As per doctors, (the) condition of Malala is stable.”
A team of specialist doctors are providing “constant care” to Malala and all “contingencies” were in place in case they decide to move her abroad for further treatment, the general said.
“It is a case of serious head injury and the progress is very slow in it.”
Two other girl students wounded with Malala were “also being taken care of at places where they can get best treatment”, he said, without elaborating.
Bajwa said that all available resources were being used to investigate the incident and some arrests had been made, but he declined to say how many people were currently in custody and how many had been let go.
Asked whether the military might now consider launching an offensive against the Taliban in their tribal area stronghold of North Waziristan, on the Afghan border, Bajwa said: “Such decisions are not taken overnight.”
Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf visited Malala on Friday, paying tribute to her and two friends who were also wounded when a gunman boarded their school bus on Tuesday and opened fire.
“It was not a crime against an individual but a crime against humanity and an attack on our national and social values,” he told reporters, pledging renewed vigour in Pakistan’s struggle with Islamist militancy.
Critical
Military spokesman Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa Friday said the next 36 to 48 hours would be critical for Malala.
Meanwhile, schools in Afghanistan opened Saturday with special prayers for the quick recovery of a Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by Taleban, in a move officials said was to show solidarity with her.
The Pakistani Taleban shot Malala Yousafzai, a teenage children’s rights activist, in the head on her school bus Tuesday, to avenge her campaigns for the right to an education in the militants’ former stronghold of Swat.
The shooting of the 14-year-old activist was denounced around the world.
“To show sympathy to Malala Yousafzai around 9.5 million students all over the country in 15,500 schools and education centres offered prayers for her quick recovery,” education ministry spokesman Amanullah Iman told AFP.
“The students also expressed their solidarity to their sister (Malala) because the attack on her was an attack on education,” he said.
“Malala is just a girl and student like us, she shouldn’t have been shot,” Freshta, a 10 grade pupil told AFP.
“Today we recited Holy Quran and prayed for her recovery,” she said.
The show of solidarity to Malala comes two days after armed men attacked a girls’ school in relatively peaceful Bamyan province in central Afghanistan, causing considerable damage but no injuries, official said.
The Taleban government, removed from power by a US-led invasion in 2001, had enforced a strict ban on girls attending schools.
There are fears that gains made by women and girls since the Taleban were ousted from power in a US-led invasion in 2001 could be eroded when international troops pull out by 2014.
Arrested
In the meantime, Pakistani police have arrested a number of suspects in the case of a 14-year-old girl shot and wounded by the Taleban for promoting education for girls and criticizing the fundamentalist Islamic movement, officials said Friday.
Police have been questioning people in the town of Mingora, in the Swat Valley, where the shooting took place.
Mingora police chief Afzal Khan Afridi said arrests had been made, but he declined to give any details about the number of people detained or what role they’re suspected of having in the shooting. He said he did not want to endanger the ongoing investigation.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters Friday that the two gunmen who staged the attack were not among those arrested, but he said investigators had identified the masterminds of the shooting and efforts were under way to capture all those involved.
The Taleban spokesman, Sirajuddin Ahmad, said Yousufzai’s family had been warned three times — the most recent warning coming last week — before the decision was made to kill her.
Ahmad said local Taleban leader Maulana Fazlullah and his deputies selected three attackers, including two trained sharpshooters, who carefully studied the girl’s route home from school.
Even before the Taleban took over the Swat Valley, Fazlullah’s radio broadcasts spread fear among residents in the area. The group first started to exert its influence in 2007 and quickly extended its reach to much of the valley by the next year. They set about imposing their will on residents by forcing men to grow beards, preventing women from going to the market and blowing up many schools — the majority for girls.
Practices
Malala wrote about these practices in a journal for the BBC under a pseudonym when she was just 11. After the Taleban were pushed out of the valley in 2009 by the Pakistani military, she became even more outspoken in advocating for girls’ education. She appeared frequently in the media and was given one of the country’s highest honors for civilians for her bravery.
Fazlullah, along with much of the Swat Taleban’s top leadership, escaped the offensive and is believed to be operating from a base in eastern Afghanistan and sending fighters back across the border to attack northwest Pakistan.
But there are indications that he was trying once again to make inroads into the area.
Between April and June, Pakistani authorities arrested nearly 100 militants in the Swat Valley, said two security officials and a senior government official.
One of those arrested was a woman identified as Naheed Bibi, who was married to Fazlullah and had been sent by him to the valley to help reactivate militant sleeping cells there, the officials added.
Her interrogation led security officials to over 60 telephone numbers of SIM cards she and her aides had bought in various northwestern cities. By monitoring all the numbers, authorities rounded up the militants — including several would-be suicide bombers — and a large number of weapons and explosives was also seized, the officials said.
The officials did not want to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Pakistanis across the country held services to pray for Yousufzai’s recovery Friday. Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf visited the hospital in Rawalpindi where she’s being treated to pay his respects and check on her condition.
As the school Yousufzai attended reopened, children and teachers tried to come to terms with what happened to their star pupil, shot in a bus roughly 300 meters (yards) from her classrooms. Police were deployed around the school, but many students still stayed away.
“We have decided to open the school after two days to overcome the fear among our students that gripped them due to the attack,” said one of the teachers, Zafar Ali Khan.
The school is owned and operated by the teenage activist’s father, who takes great pride in his daughter’s accomplishments and is a champion of education for girls.