Girl targeted by Taliban is released from the hospital

Malala Yousufzai is an inspirational figure whose story touched the world. As you might remember, she's the 15-year-old who was shot in the head and wounded on her way home from school last October. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying she was promoting "Western thinking."

Today, however, Yousufzai is well on her way to recovery, having been discharged from the hospital she was flown to for treatment.

"Malala is a strong young woman and has worked hard with the people caring for her to make excellent progress in her recovery," said Dave Rosser, medical director of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. "Following discussions with Malala and her medical team, we decided that she would benefit from being at home with her parents and two brothers." ...

Her departure from the hospital comes in the same week that gunmen in Islamabad on motorcycles sprayed a van carrying employees from a community center with bullets, killing five female teachers and two aid workers.

The director of the group that the seven worked for says he suspects it may have been the latest in a series of attacks targeting anti-polio efforts in Pakistan. Some Islamic militants oppose the vaccination campaigns, accusing health workers of acting as spies for the United States and alleging the vaccine is intended to make Muslim children sterile.

Last month, nine people working on an anti-polio vaccination campaign were shot and killed. Four of those shootings were in the northwest where Tuesday's attack took place.

Yousufzai will be readmitted to the hospital in February to have reconstructive surgery on her skull.  In the meantime, her father has been appointed Pakistan's education attache in Birmingham, personally welcomed by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

Good news that Malala is well enough to leave hospital. We wish her well as her recovery continues with her family.

— Gordon & Sarah Brown (@OfficeGSBrown) January 4, 2013