Malala's attackers arrested

The Pakistani army said that it had arrested a group of Taliban fighters who are allegedly responsible for carrying out an attack on teenage rights activist Malala Yousafzai in 2012.

Asim Bajwa, head of the military's press office, said 10 men had been identified and arrested in a joint operation involving the army, police and intelligence agencies.

"The group involved in the attack on Malala Yousufzai has been arrested," Major General Asim Bajwa told a news conference.

He said the men were part of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the plan to kill Malala came from network's current leader Maulana Fazlullah.

Painful recovery, international fame

Malala was shot in the head in October 2012 on her way home from school in her native Swat Valley for speaking out for girls' right to education. She narrowly survived the assassination attempt, spending many months in hospital, first in Pakistan and subsequently in Britain. She now lives in Birmingham with her family.

She had sparked the ire of radical Islamist groups at the age of 11, with a blog on her life as a girl in Pakistan's restive northwestern Swat Valley for the BBC's Urdu service in 2009.

A year after her attack, she published her autobiography, "I Am Malala."

She has received a number of prizes and international recognition for her dedication to the education of girls and for her courageous recovery. She was awarded the EU's human rights award, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2013, after winning the International Children's Peace Prize. She was also named Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience 2013 and became the youngest person ever to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

sb/kms (AFP, Reuters)