[ti:Arrests in the Shooting of a Pakistani Schoolgirl] [ar:Steve Ember] [al:IN THE NEWS] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]Go to 51voa.com for more... [00:03.71]From VOA Learning English, [00:06.90]this is IN THE NEWS in Special English. [00:10.80]Pakistani police have arrested suspects [00:14.55]in the shooting of a fourteen year old school girl. [00:18.59]Officials say the arrests took place [00:22.10]in northwest Pakistan's Swat Valley. [00:26.35]The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack. [00:30.98]Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head [00:35.17]and neck Tuesday as she left school. [00:39.01]The following day, [00:40.86]doctors successfully removed a bullet from her neck. [00:45.26]She is being treated at the country's top military hospital. [00:50.41]Doctors say she has a seventy percent chance of surviving. [00:56.40]Malala Yousafzai became famous for speaking out against the Taliban. [01:03.40]Witnesses say gunmen who came to her school asked for her by name. [01:10.29]The gunmen open fired as she was entering a school bus. [01:15.65]Two other students also were wounded. [01:19.69]The Taliban says Malala Yousafzai [01:23.88]was targeted for what it called her "pro-West" ideology. [01:29.64]It says she denounced the Taliban [01:32.99]and called President Obama her hero. [01:37.14]On Friday a spokesman for the group said Taliban leaders [01:42.78]decided a few months ago to kill the school girl, [01:47.57]and told gunmen to carry out the attack. [01:52.02]The girl's uncle, Ahmed Shah Yousafzai, [01:55.91]is head of the Swat Valley Peace Council. [01:59.66]He told VOA that no one expected that such a fierce attack [02:05.84]would be carried out against her. [02:08.29]"People once again are terrified; [02:12.49]they are scared that the situation is getting worse. [02:16.94]Until now, people were hopeful that peace has been restored. [02:22.72]Yes, in Swat we witnessed targeted killing time after time, [02:28.82]but no one was expecting a ninth-grade student [02:32.86]would be targeted this brutally." [02:35.76]The Taliban led a violent campaign for control of the Swat area [02:42.10]in two thousand eight and two thousand nine. [02:45.70]The campaign included attacks on schools. [02:49.99]The Taliban had banned girls from attending school. [02:55.19]It was in this period that then eleven year old Malala Yousafzai [03:02.18]began to document the abuses by the Taliban. [03:06.93]Using the name Gul Makai, [03:10.27]she wrote about them in a blog published by the BBC. [03:15.07]Her blog told about her experiences in areas controlled by the Taliban. [03:22.85]She and her friends had disobeyed the ban by attending school. [03:29.30]In twenty eleven, the Pakistani government [03:33.84]recognized Malala Yousafzai with the National Peace Award. [03:39.77]But attacks on girls' schools continued in the country's northwest. [03:45.91]Last October, a Pakistani official told VOA [03:51.16]that about one thousand two hundred schools [03:54.91]had been destroyed over the past few years. [03:59.31]Pakistani political and religious leaders have condemned the attack. [04:05.87]So have Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Obama. [04:12.37]American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton [04:16.47]praised the work of the young activist [04:19.56]and said Islamic militants feel threatened by powerful women. [04:25.73]On Friday, Pakistanis at Islamic centers across the nation [04:31.32]prayed for the girl's recovery. [04:34.32]And in Switzerland, United Nations experts [04:39.03]urged Pakistan's government to make sure [04:42.68]that school children, especially girls, are protected. [04:47.58]And that's IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. [04:53.82]I'm Steve Ember.