A Pakistani official says doctors have successfully removed a bullet from a 14-year-old girl who was shot by the Taliban for speaking out in support of education for women.

The information minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province said Wednesday that a team of army and civilian surgeons are treating Malala Yousufzai in a military hospital in Peshawar.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain says the operation took hours to remove the bullet from the girl's neck because there were complications. He says she was improving but was still unconscious.

Yousufzai was admired across Pakistan for exposing the Taliban's atrocities and advocating for girls' education in the face of religious extremism.

On Tuesday a Taliban gunmen shot her in the head and neck on her way home from school.