Malala launches education petition

Shooting near Afghan border has been widely condemned Peshawar - Arabstoday Pakistani school girl Malala Yousufzai has petitioned the country's government after a girls’ school teacher was killed in a drive-by shooting in the tribal belt on the Afghan border. Shahnaz Nazli, 41, was shot dead in Shahkas, near the town of Jamrud in Khyber tribal district, between the northwestern city of Peshawar and the Afghan border. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but militants are particularly opposed to girls’ education in the northwest, where they have bombed hundreds of schools in recent years. Nazli was on her way to the government girls’ primary school in Shahkas when gunmen fired at her about 200 metres from the school and fled, local government official Asmatullah Wazir told AFP. “The teacher was killed after unknown gunmen on a motorbike shot her and fled,” Wazir said. Malala, who was shot and wounded by a Taliban gunman for campaigning for girls’ education in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, last October, has launched an online petition addressed to the Pakistani president. The petition states: "Mourning the death of Shahnaz Nazli, a courageous teacher shot for wanting to ensure girls have the right to go to school, we call on the president and government of Pakistan to end the killings and violence that prevent girls' education and to ensure all girls can go to school. "We call for all girls and all teachers to be protected and given security to enable them to enjoy their basic right to be educated," it concludes. Meanwhile, UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown has condemned the shooting of Nazli, describing it as a "Malala-style" incident. In a statement, Brown said: "No one should be shot for wanting to go to school or wanting to teach girls. "Sixty million teachers round the world will want to condemn the assassination of a woman just because she wanted girls to be educated," he added.