Pakistan's military says it has arrested 10 Pakistan Taliban fighters suspected in the shooting of Malala Yousafzai for campaigning against the group's opposition to female education.

Asim Bajwa, an army spokesman, said on Friday that those arrested had a death list of 22 targets in addition to Yousafzai.

Bajwa told the Reuters news agency that the list was ordered by Maulana Fazlullah, the current leader of the Pakistan Taliban.

Yousafzai was 14 when she was shot in the head and neck in October 2012 as she travelled in a school van with classmates in the Swat Valley. The gunman stopped the van and asked for her by name.

The Pakistan Taliban said it carried out the attack, which injured two other girls.

Yousafzai was sent to the UK for treatment, and has since become a symbol of defiance to the Pakistan Taliban's operations in the Pashtun tribal areas of the country's northwest.

Now 17, she has won the EU's human rights award and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Yousafzai is now based in the UK and is unable to return to Pakistan because of death threats.