A 14-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for the right to an education in an attack that shocked the world arrived in Britain for specialist care yesterday.
Malala Yousafzai, who was attacked on her school bus in the former Taliban stronghold of the Swat valley last Tuesday, flew in to Birmingham Airport in central England at around 3.50pm, an airport spokeswoman said.
She will be cared for at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, a highly specialised facility where British soldiers seriously wounded in Afghanistan are treated, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister David Cameron said.
Doctors in Pakistan have said Malala needs treatment for a damaged skull and “intensive neuro-rehabilitation”.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the “barbaric” attack on Malala had “shocked Pakistan and the world”.
“Malala will now receive specialist medical care in an NHS (National Health Service) hospital,” he said, adding that public revulsion and condemnation of this attack shows that the people of Pakistan will not be beaten by terrorists.
Security concerns meant Malala’s departure after daybreak from Islamabad Airport – in an air ambulance provided by the United Arab Emirates – was not announced until the plane was airborne.
Malala, who had been treated in a Pakistani military hospital, was accompanied on the plane by an intensive care specialist.
Asked if Malala will be guarded at the Birmingham hospital, Cameron’s spokeswoman said: “You wouldn’t expect me to talk about security matters in detail but certainly security has been taken into account.”
The shooting has been denounced worldwide and by Pakistan, which has said it will do everything possible to ensure Malala recovers and will meet all the costs of her treatment.
The cold-blooded murder attempt has sickened Pakistan, where Malala came to prominence with a blog for the BBC highlighting atrocities under the the hardline Islamist Taliban, who terrorised the Swat valley from 2007 until an army offensive in 2009.