DHAKA: Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenage activist who was shot by the Taliban last year, has been invited to Buckingham Palace.

Malala, 16, will attend a reception on Youth, Education and the Commonwealth being hosted by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip on October 18, the palace confirmed.

Other guests will include teachers and academics, reports The Voice of Russia.

On October 9 in 2012, Taliban gunmen shot Malala in the head on a girls’ school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley because of her public campaign for the right of all girls to education.

Malala was flown a few days after the shooting to Britain, where she was hospitalised for months while recuperating and undergoing rehabilitation.

She now lives with her family in Birmingham in central England, with her parents and two brothers.

She is among the record 259 nominees for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which is to be announced on October 11.

Speaking on her 16th birthday in July at the United Nations, she said, ‘On October 9, they shot at the left side of my head and thought that bullets can silence me, but they failed’.

She told the UN Youth Assembly, ‘The extremists are afraid of books, of girls and boys going to school, and that is why they kill innocent people. They are afraid of change and equality’.

Malala vowed at the UN to continue her struggle for girls’ education.

‘I do not want to be the girl who was shot by Taliban - I want to be the girl who fought for the rights of girls.’

BDST: 1755 HRS, OCT 06, 2013
RoR/SRS