Shangla:

Nobel prize winner Malala Yousafzai on Wednesday visited his hometown of Barkana in Khyber Pakhtunkhwas Shangla District for the first time since surviving a Taliban murder attempt in 2012.

During his visit, Malala met family members and paid respect at her ancestral cemetery. She also visited her uncle, Ramazan, who recently underwent heart surgery in Islamabad.

Karora Station House Officer (SHO) Amjad Alam Khan confirmed that Malala arrived in Barkana by helicopter, accompanied by her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, and her husband, Aseer Malik, whom she married in 2021.

Malala also visited the school and college, she established in 2018 to provide free education to almost 1,000 girls in the district, who previously had no operational government girlfriends.

“Malala met students, inspected classes and talked to them while encouraging them to study and make their future brighter,” SHO Khan said. He added that the Malala Foundation would continue to ensure high quality education at the institution for free.

During her visit, Malala also stopped at home to her maternal relative, Faiz Ahmad, where she met with family members.

Educational activist Shehzad Roy, who runs Shangla Girls School and College under the Zindagi Trust, was also present at the occasion. He briefed Malala about the facilities provided by the college.