Malala Returns To Pakistan For The First Time Since Attack
(CNN) — Nearly six years after being shot in the face and neck by the Taliban for advocating for the rights of girls, 20-year-old Malala Yousafzai returned Thursday to Pakistan, a source with close knowledge of the visit told CNN.
CNN affiliate Geo reported that Yousafzai arrived at Benazir Bhutto International Airport.
Yousafzai, the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, is expected to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi while she is in Islamabad, where the city is on high alert for security due to her visit.
In 2012, an assailant from the Pakistani Taliban attacked 14-year-old Yousafzai and her classmates in their school bus in Mingora in Pakistan's Swat Valley.
Severely wounded, Yousafzai was taken by helicopter from one military hospital in Pakistan to another, where doctors placed her in a medically induced coma so an air ambulance could fly her to Great Britain for treatment.
Little more than a week after being shot, Yousafzai got back on her feet again, able to stand when leaning on a nurse's arm at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England.
Since her attack Yousafzai continued to be an impassioned activist fighting for girls to have the right to education anywhere in the world. She founded the Malala Fund, which invests in local educational initiatives for girls in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Kenya, and in Jordan, where it focuses on Syrian refugees.
After Yousafzai was attacked, the Taliban had released a statement saying that they would target her again if she survived.
In her most recent public interview she spoke to talk show host David Letterman about how she missed "the rivers and mountains" of her home in Swat Valley and all she wanted was for her "feet to touch the ground of home."
Born in the city of Mingora, Yousafzai persistently attended school there despite the growing threat of fundamentalists opposed to girls getting an education. Not only that, she blogged for the BBC about the dangers of living in the area and the importance of girls going to school.
— Sophia Saifi
The-CNN-Wire
(™ & © 2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.)
