Swat's Nobel laureate comes home

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai on Wednesday visited her hometown Barkana in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Shangla district for the first time since surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban in 2012.

During her visit, Malala met family members and paid respects at her ancestral graveyard. 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 nearly 1,000 girls in the district, which previously had no operational government girls' college.

"Malala met students, inspected classes, and spoke to them while urging them to study and make their future brighter," SHO Khan said. He added that the Malala Fund would continue to ensure high-quality education at the institution free of charge.

During her visit, Malala also stopped by the home of her maternal relative, Faiz Ahmad, where she met with family members.

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