ISLAMABAD: A teenage Pakistani rights activist was flown to Britain for long-term care on Monday after being shot in the head by the Taliban for campaigning for the right to education.

Malala Yousafzai, 14, who was attacked in her school bus in the former Taliban stronghold of the Swat valley on Tuesday last week, was sent abroad at a time when her condition is “optimal and before any unforeseen complications set in,” the military said.

An air ambulance provided by the United Arab Emirates took off from Islamabad airport after daybreak, and Pakistan said that an intensive care specialist was accompanying her.

The shooting has been denounced worldwide and by Pakistan, which has said that it will do everything possible to ensure that Malala recovers, paying for her treatment and offering more than $100,000 for the capture of her attackers.

The cold-blooded murder attempt has sickened Pakistan, where Malala came to prominence with a blog for the British Broadcasting Corp. highlighting 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 those who advocate appeasement with the Taliban, but analysts suspect that there will be no significant change in a country that has sponsored radical Islam for decades.

Malala was first airlifted from Swat to a military hospital in the northwestern city of Peshawar, then to the country’s top military hospital in Rawalpindi, where doctors on Sunday took her off a ventilator for a “successful” short trial.

The Army said that a panel of Pakistani doctors and international experts agreed that Malala needed “prolonged care to fully recover from the physical and psychological effects of trauma that she has received.”

It was also expected that damaged bones in her skull would need to be repaired or replaced, and that she would need “long-term rehabilitation, including intensive neuro-rehabilitation.”