Girl, 14, who fought for right to education is shot by Taliban

A 14-year-old Pakistani girl who campaigned to promote girls' education and expose extremist brutality has been shot in the head by Taliban gunmen.

Malala Yousafzai was on her way home from school in the former militant stronghold of Swat, a district in the north-west of the country, when two men opened fire, shooting her in the forehead and injuring two other girls. Witnesses said a bearded man had asked for the girl by name before opening fire.

Malala's work earned her international recognition and numerous peace awards after she was named as the girl who wrote an anonymous blog for the BBC's Urdu service when the Taliban controlled Swat in 2009. But it also brought death threats. A spokesman for the Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility on Tuesday for the attack, accusing Malala of promoting Western, secular values.

"This was a new chapter of obscenity, and we have to finish this chapter," he said. "We have carried out this attack."

Mian Iftikhar Husing Husain, the local information minister, said: "It is the sign of weakness of Taliban that they have been targeting females."

Doctors in the town of Mingora said Malala would be transferred to a hospital in the city of Peshawar, but all three girls were in a stable condition.

Malala, whose name means "grief-stricken" in the local Pashto language, was 11 when the Taliban took over the Swat Valley and ordered girls' schools to close. Her anonymous blog is credited with being one of the first voices to alert the world to the Taliban's brutal campaign of beheadings and violence.

In it, she described how her classmates were forced to hide books under their shawls and lived in fear of having acid thrown in their faces.

She continued to keep her diary when Pakistani troops eventually launched an offensive against the militants.

"I heard my father talking about another three bodies lying at Green Chowk [a major crossing in Mingora]," she wrote. "Before the launch of the military operation we all used to go to Marghazar, Fiza Ghat and Kanju for picnics on Sundays. But now the situation is such that we have not been out on [a] picnic for over a year and a half."

The Pakistan army drove the Taliban insurgency from Swat in July 2009. Since then she has campaigned for more girls to have the chance to go to school.

In an interview earlier this year, she described her motivation. "I was scared enough to see pictures of bodies hanging in Swat. But the decision to ban girls from going to school was shocking for me and I decided to stand against the forces of backwardness," she said.