Malala 'returns to Pakistan for first time since assassination attempt'

Campaigner Malala Yousafzai has reportedly returned to Pakistan for the first time since she was shot in the head by Taliban militants in 2012 for advocating for women's education.

Reports in local media suggest the 20-year-old arrived at Islamabad's international airport in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Pakistani television channel Geo TV aired footage claiming to show Ms Yousafzai leaving Benazir Bhutto International Airport and getting into a car escorted by a security convoy.

It is reported that she will meet with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi during her stay.

Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai gives a speech in Birmingham (Joe Giddens/PA)
Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai gives a speech in Birmingham (Joe Giddens/PA)

Ms Yousafzai, who is now studying at Oxford University, was just 15 when she was targeted by the Taliban for her outspoken campaigning over girls' rights to an education.

Her career as an activist began in early 2009, when she started writing a blog for the BBC about her life under Taliban occupation and promoting education for girls in Pakistan's Swat Valley.

But her campaign angered local militants and she was shot during an assassination attempt while taking the bus to school.

She was treated at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital and, fearing reprisals in her native country, made the city her home.

In 2014 she became the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and her campaign for children's rights to education across the world has seen her address the United Nations on the issue.

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