Doctors at CMH to decide whether to fly abroad Malala for treatment. PHOTO: RASHID AJMERI/EXPRESS/FILE

PESHAWAR: The bullet lodged near 14-year-old child activist Malala Yousufzai’s neck was removed during an operation done early Wednesday morning around 2am, Express Newsreported while quoting sources.

According to Express News correspondent Eshtisham Bashir, a doctor who was part of the team of surgeons who operated on Malala, verified that the bullet had been removed.

Doctors were to decide Wednesday whether to fly abroad 14-year-old child activist Malala Yousufzai, who is reported to be in critical condition after being shot in the head by the Taliban.

The security guard of Khushaal Public School and the driver of the van in which Malala was travelling when the attack took place have been detained by the police for investigations.

Malala was shot on a school bus with two friends in Swat on Tuesday, then flown to Peshawar to be admitted to Combined Military Hospital (CMH).

She spent Tuesday night in intensive care, where doctors at CMH described her condition as critical.

A military officer told AFP that a team of top doctors had flown to Peshawar to assess her condition on Wednesday.

“They have a two-point agenda – to determine if Malala Yousafzai’s condition allows her to be shifted abroad for treatment or if she needs surgery here,” the officer said.

Last night, a doctor at CMH told AFP that the bullet had travelled from her head and then lodged in the back shoulder, near the neck.

“She is in the intensive care unit and semi-conscious, although not on the ventilator,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

The next three to four days would be crucial, he added.

Khushal Public School, where Malala studies, has announced that it will remain closed for three days, while private schools have decided to remain closed, today.

Students will protest the attack in front of Mingora Press Club, today, while the Awami National Party will stage a demonstration in Swat.

The Peshawar High Bar Association has called an emergency meeting.

Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani arrived in Peshawar to see Malala and enquire about her health.

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) told AFP that it had a Boeing 737 ready at Peshawar airport to fly Malala abroad if necessary, most probably to Dubai.

“We are waiting for new orders and as soon as we get the instruction she will be flown abroad,” PIA chief Junaid Yusuf told AFP.

Malala won international recognition for highlighting Taliban atrocities in Swat with a blog for the BBC three years ago, when the militants burned girls schools and terrorised the valley.

Her struggle resonated with tens of thousands of girls who were being denied an education by militants across northwest Pakistan, where the government has been fighting local Taliban since 2007.

She received the first-ever national peace award from the Pakistani government last year, and was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize by advocacy group KidsRights Foundation in 2011.

Tuesday’s shooting in broad daylight raises serious questions about security more than three years after the army claimed to have crushed a Taliban insurgency in the valley.

The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed the attack in a series of telephone calls to reporters and then issued a strongly-worded statement justifying the attack on a child on the grounds that Malala had preached secularism “and so-called enlightened moderation”.