Pakistan makes arrests in shooting

MINGORA, Pakistan - Pakistani police have arrested a number of suspects in the case of a 14-year-old girl shot and wounded by the Taliban for promoting education for girls and criticizing the fundamentalist Islamic movement, officials said Friday.

The shooting of Malala Yousufzai along with two classmates while they were on their way home from school Tuesday horrified people in Pakistan and internationally. It has been followed by an outpouring of support for a girl who earned the enmity of the Taliban for publicizing their acts and speaking about the importance of education for girls.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying that the girl was promoting "Western thinking." Late on Thursday, a spokesman for one of the group's branches in the country's north said his unit decided two months ago to kill Yousufzai in a carefully planned attack after her family ignored repeated warnings.

Police have been questioning people in the town of Mingora, in the Swat Valley, where the shooting took place.

Mingora Police Chief Afzal Khan Afridi said arrests had been made, but he declined to give any details about the number of people detained or what role they're suspected of having in the shooting.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters Friday that the two gunmen who staged the attack were not among those arrested, but he said investigators had identified the masterminds of the shooting and efforts were under way to capture all those involved.

The Taliban spokesman, Sirajuddin Ahmad, said Yousufzai's family had been warned three times - the most recent warning coming last week - before the decision was made to kill her.

Ahmad said local Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah and his deputies selected three attackers, including two trained sharpshooters, who carefully studied the girl's route home from school.

Even before the Taliban took over the Swat Valley, Fazlullah's radio broadcasts spread fear among residents in the area.

The group first started to exert its influence in 2007 and quickly extended its reach to much of the valley by the next year. The militants set about imposing their will on residents by forcing men to grow beards, preventing women from going to the market, and blowing up many schools - the majority for girls.

Malala wrote about these practices in a journal for the BBC under a pseudonym when she was just 11.

After the Taliban was pushed out of the valley in 2009 by the Pakistani military, she became even more outspoken in advocating for girls' education. She appeared frequently in the media and was given one of the country's highest honors for civilians for her bravery.

Pakistanis across the country held services to pray for Yousufzai's recovery Friday. Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf visited the hospital in Rawalpindi where she's being treated to pay his respects and check on her condition.

As the school Yousufzai attended reopened, children and teachers tried to come to terms with what happened to their star pupil, shot in a bus roughly 300 yards from her classrooms. Police were deployed around the school, but many students still stayed away.

The school is owned and operated by the teenage activist's father, who takes great pride in his daughter's accomplishments and is a champion of education for girls.