Malala Yousafzai wrote about the Taliban banning girls education in Pakistan for the BBC in 2009, is the subject of two New York Times documentaries, and was the winner of Pakistan's first National Peace Award in December. On Tuesday, on her way home from school, she was shot in the neck and head by Taliban gunmen in a premeditated attack. The exact number of gunmen and the details of the shooting are still being sorted out—the BBC itself has two different accounts—but it's pretty clear why Taliban officials wanted her dead.  "This was a new chapter of obscenity, and we have to finish this chapter ... We have carried out this attack," Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan in a report by the AP. Pakistani newspaper Dawn adds that "Ahsan said that the TTP accepts responsibility of the attack as Malala was propagating anti-Taliban and ‘secular’ thoughts among the youth of the area." According to doctors, Malala was now out of danger. However, Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf has ordered to shift her to a Peshawar hospital swiftly through a helicopter." reports the Dawn. 

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Alexander Abad-Santos