Malala Yousafzai – shot because she campaigned for right of young females to an education – will be treated in NHS hospital

A Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban because she campaigned for the right of young females to an education is on her way to the UK for specialist treatment.

Malala Yousafzai, 14, was shot in the head last Tuesday in an attack that prompted widespread revulsion, in Pakistan and abroad. It also raised fresh questions about the state's ability to tackle militancy. Malala's life was saved by neurosurgeons in a Pakistani military hospital and she has since been in intensive care.

Doctors have recommended she be transferred to a UK centre "which has the capability to provide integrated care to children who have sustained severe injury", a Pakistani military spokesman said. The flight left Rawalpindi on Monday morning. She is travelling with an army intensive care assistant on a specially equipped air ambulance leased from the UAE and will be treated in Birmingham at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, an NHS hospital with a specialist major trauma centre.

The Pakistani government is bearing the costs of transportation and treatment. The UK foreign secretary, William Hague, said: "Last week's barbaric attack on Malala Yousafzai and her schoolfriends shocked Pakistan and the world. Malala's bravery in standing up for the right of all young girls in Pakistan to an education is an example to us all.

"Malala will now receive specialist medical care in an NHS hospital. Our thoughts remain with Malala and he family at this difficult time."

The Foreign Office said the move followed an offer by the UK government to assist Malala in any way that it could.

Malala was shot in the head and neck while she sat with classmates on a school bus as it prepared to drive students home after morning classes in Mingora, a city in the Swat valley, where the army mounted major operations in 2009 to crush a Taliban insurgency. She had become famous after writing a blog in 2009 for the BBC Urdu service about life under the Taliban insurgency.

The Taliban issued a statement claiming it was obligatory to kill anyone "leading a campaign" against Islamic law, and warned it would again attempt to kill her if she recovered from her injuries.

Police have arrested at least three suspects in connection with the attack but the two gunmen who carried out the shooting remain at large.

The biggest rally yet showing solidarity with Malala was held in the southern city of Karachi on Sunday but the response to her shooting has been relatively low key in Pakistan compared with that to last month's demonstrations against a film produced in the US that denigrated the prophet Muhammad. Government officials have condemned the attack but refrained from publicly criticising the Taliban by name over the attack, in what critics say demonstrates a lack of resolve against extremism.

The former UK prime minister Gordon Brown, who is UN special envoy for global education, launched an "I am Malala" petition on Monday. "Today, sadly, 32 million girls are not going to school, and it is time to fight harder for Malala's dream to come true," said Brown. He said he would hand the petition to Asif Ali Zardari, when he visited the Pakistani president next month, and that it would also be given to the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.