Shot Malala Yousafzai 'now recovering well'

Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai who was shot by the Taliban has told how she is recovering well hours after undergoing a five-hour operation.

Malala, 15, had surgery on Saturday at a Birmingham hospital to fit a titanium plate over her damaged skull.

In a video recorded on Sunday, she is seen telling a consultant that her mission now is to "help people".

It was earlier revealed a fund would be set up in her name to help all children get an education.

The teenager was shot on a school bus in October in Pakistan by the Taliban after campaigning for girls' rights to education.

Following the shooting, the bullet was removed from her head by surgeons in Pakistan and she was flown to the UK for further treatment.

Malala was discharged as an inpatient from Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital last month.

Surgeons at the hospital said Saturday's operation, which also involved fitting a cochlear implant to help her get over deafness on her left-hand side, had gone well. They said they did not expect she would need any further surgery.

'Feeling better'

Speaking in the video in English, Malala said she was feeling "all right".

She said: "I can walk a little bit, I can talk - I am feeling better. It seems like I have not had a very big operation - it just feels like I had an anaesthetic injection for five hours and then I woke up."

Medical director Dr Dave Rosser said Malala had coped "remarkably well"

She added: "My mission is to help people and I will do that."

In an earlier video, filmed before her operation, Malala had said she wanted to "serve the people" and said she was "getting better day by day".

Earlier it had been announced that the first grant from the Malala fund would go towards an organisation in the teenager's home region of the Swat Valley in Pakistan to encourage girls to go to school instead of going straight into work.

The Taliban had previously said it attacked the campaigner for girls' education for "promoting secularism".

The Birmingham hospital's medical director Dr Dave Rosser said: "To be sitting up 24 hours after an operation, talking about helping other people instead of thinking about herself sums up what we have seen from Malala over the past few months."

He said the teenager had coped "remarkably well" with what she had gone through and that doctors hope she will have completely recovered from her injuries over the next year.