ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani teenage activist shot in the head by the Taliban remained on a ventilator in a hospital on Saturday, as people continued to pray for her recovery, the military said.

The shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who campaigned for the right to an education, has been denounced worldwide and by the Pakistani authorities, who have offered a reward of more than $100,000 for the capture of her attackers.

“[The] health condition of Malala continues to remain satisfactory. Her vitals are okay and she is still on [the] ventilator,” the Pakistani military said in an update.

“A board of doctors is continuously monitoring her condition,” it added.

Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf visited Malala on Friday, paying tribute to her and two friends who were also wounded when a gunman boarded their school bus on Tuesday and opened fire.

“It was not a crime against an individual, but a crime against humanity and an attack on our national and social values,” he told reporters, pledging renewed vigor in Pakistan’s struggle with Islamist militancy.

Major Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, the military’s spokesman, said on Friday that the next 36 to 48 hours would be critical for Malala.

The attack has sickened Pakistan, where Malala won international prominence with a blog for the British Broadcasting Corp. that highlighted atrocities under the Taliban, who terrorized the Swat valley from 2007 until a 2009 Army offensive.

Activists say that the shooting should be a wake-up call to whose who advocate appeasement with the Taliban, but analysts suspect that there will be no seismic shift in a country that has sponsored radical Islam for decades.

Schools opened with prayers for Malala on Friday and special prayers were held at mosques across the country for her speedy recovery at the country’s top military hospital in the city of Rawalpindi.

Solidarity
Schools in Afghanistan on Saturday also opened with special prayers for the teenager, in a move officials said was to show solidarity with her.

“To show sympathy to Malala Yousafzai, about 9.5 million students all over the country in 15,500 schools and education centers offered prayers for her quick recovery,” education ministry spokesman Amanullah Iman told Agence France-Presse.

“The students also expressed their solidarity to their sister [Malala] because the attack on her was an attack on education,” he said.

“Malala is just a girl and student like us, she shouldn’t have been shot,” Freshta, a Grade 10 student, told Agence France-Presse.

“Today we recited [the] Quran and prayed for her recovery,” she said.

The show of solidarity to Malala comes two days after armed men attacked a girls’ school in relatively peaceful Bamyan province in central Afghanistan, causing considerable damage but no injuries, official said.

The Taliban government, removed from power by a US-led invasion in 2001, had enforced a strict ban on girls attending schools.

There are fears that gains made by women and girls since the Taliban were ousted from power in a US-led invasion in 2001 could be eroded when international troops pull out by 2014.