Taliban shoot Pakistani schoolgirl campaigning for peace

Since then, she has received numerous threats. On Tuesday, gunmen arrived at her school and asked for her by name, witnesses told police. Yousufzai was shot when she came out of class and went to a bus.

Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said his group was behind the shooting.

“She was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban and she was calling President Obama her ideal leader,” Ehsan said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

“She was young but she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas,” he said, referring to the main ethnic group in northwest Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. Most members of the Taliban come from conservative Pashtun tribes.

Doctors were struggling to save Yousufzai, said Lal Noor, a doctor at the Saidu Sharif Teaching Hospital in the Swat valley’s main town of Mingora.

The U.S. State Department condemned the attack.

“Directing violence at children is barbaric. It’s cowardly. And our hearts go out to her and the others who were wounded, as well as their families,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington.

Source yahoo.com