Boy shot in Pakistan school massacre fears return home

Fourteen-year-old Ahmad Nawaz was shot in the arm by a Taliban gunman

The family of a boy seriously injured in the Pakistan school massacre claim their lives will be put in danger if they return home.

Ahmad Nawaz was flown to Birmingham for surgery after he was shot in the arm in Peshawar last December, but his family's visas run out on 4 August.

Taliban gunmen killed Haris, Ahmad's brother, among 141 children and staff.

Mohammad Nawaz, father of 14-year-old Ahmad, said he hoped the family could remain longer in the UK.

However the family has yet to make a formal application to extend their visas, the BBC understands.

The Home Office said it did not routinely comment on individual cases.

Mr Nawaz said: "If we go back, they are not human beings, I think they will kill me and also kill all my family."

Nobel Peace prize winner Malala Yousafzai visited Ahmad to offer support to him and his family

Haris Nawaz (l) died in the Taliban attack, while Umar (r) is too scared to sleep apart from his mother Samina

Mr Nawaz claims he received two death threats from the Taliban before the family travelled from Pakistan with Ahmad in February.

He claimed one call was found to have come from Torkham - a border crossing area - and the other threatened to target the ambulance carrying Ahmad from Peshawar to the airport in Islamabad before he was flown for surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.

Ahmad has now been discharged as an inpatient from the hospital, which overlooks the semi-detached home where the family has been living.

But the family says he and his brother Umar, seven, remain traumatised.

Ahmad said: "Every time I'm sleeping or thinking of something, that same thoughts [of the massacre] are in my mind therefore I'm very stressed and depressed."

Mohammad said the family was given security in Pakistan after the death threats he claimed they received

In February, his mother Samina Nawaz, described how her son "has nightmares of Kalashnikovs and the Taliban chasing him" after he "played dead" as he lay injured while Taliban gunmen stalked his school.

The attackers had scaled the walls of the school's compound before conducting a shooting spree, in one of the worst assaults in the country's recent history.

At the time, a Taliban spokesman told the BBC militants had attacked the army-run school in response to military operations in North Waziristan and the Khyber area.

The High Commission for Pakistan in London said: "The request of the family for extended treatment of Ahmad Nawaz in the UK is under active consideration of the government of Pakistan."

The Pakistani authorities agreed to pay for Ahmad's medical treatment in Birmingham after a high-profile campaign in Pakistan.

The Taliban killed 141 people in the massacre at a Pakistani school in December