Pakistan Army fetes Malala for winning Nobel

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan Army has congratulated the teenage education rights activist Malala Yousafzai for becoming the first Pakistani to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace, Samaa reported.

"Congrats;#Malala becomes 2nd Pakistani to win coveted Nobel prize.Except for terrorists, all Pakistanis want their children in school", DG Inter-Services Public Relation, Maj Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa said in tweet posted on his Twitter handle.

Malala is the second Pakistani Nobel Laureate as Dr Abdus Salam was the first son of soil, who won the Nobel for physics in 1979.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly Friday toYousafzai, who survived being shot by the Taliban, and to India's Kailash Satyarthi for their championing of children's rights.

Malala, the youngest ever Nobel laureate, heard the news while in class at her school in Birmingham, England, where she moved from Pakistan to receive life-saving treatment two years ago.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the duo, who will share the $1.1 mn (874,000 euro) prize money, were chosen for struggling against repression of children and young people and for championing "the right of all children to education."

Malala, who had fought for years for the right of girls to education in her strictly Muslim home region, leapt to global fame after a Taliban gunman got on her school bus in October 2012, asked "Who is Malala?" and shot her in the head.

Her campaign, the Nobel committee said, has been carried out "under the most dangerous circumstances."

"Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls' rights to education," the committee said.

The selection of such a young winner was bound to be eye-catching, but another unusual aspect of this year's prize was the choice of citizens from the hostile neighbours of India and Pakistan. Seventeen civilians have been killed in the last few days in the disputed Kashmir region, the worst violence for decades.

"The choice of winners shows that this is an issue that matters to us all, no matter what our age, gender, country or religion," Amnesty International's general secretary, Salil Shetty, said.

The laureates are expected to come to Oslo to pick up their prize on December 10.--SAMAA/Agencies