LONDON - Malala Yousufzai, the Pakistani teenage education-rights campaigner who was shot in the head by the Taliban, has been able to stand for the first time since the attack and is communicating by writing, a British hospital official said Friday.
But the 14-year-old whose plight has aroused international concern is still fighting an infection caused by the bullet that entered her head, burrowed past her jaw and lodged above her shoulder blade, said David Rosser, medical director at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, in central England. Malala was flown to the hospital from Pakistan this week for specialized treatment.
Rosser said Malala has continued to show signs of improvement since waking from a long anesthesia.
"One of the first things she asked the nurses was what country she was in," he told reporters, adding: "She's closer to the edge of the woods, but she's not out of the woods."
The teenager was shot aboard a school bus in Pakistan's Swat Valley, a scenic region that has come under the sway of Taliban militants and their fanatical Islamist ideology.
The bullet that struck her did not penetrate her skull, Rosser said. Instead, it entered her head near her left eyebrow, then traveled under the surface of the skin down the side of her head and neck. Shock waves from the bullet shattered a bone in her skull, and fragments were driven into her brain.
Three brothers have been arrested in connection to the Oct. 9 shooting, though Pakistani authorities said none was believed to have been the gunman. Officials in Pakistan were quoted earlier this week as saying that the suspected attacker had been detained in 2009 during a military offensive in the Swat Valley but later released.
The Taliban has vowed to finish Malala off, prompting tight security at the Birmingham hospital.
The attack sparked huge rallies across Pakistan and the rest of the world on her behalf. Rosser said his young patient was "keen to thank people" for their outpouring of support.
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