Bogus 'relatives' turn up Malala’s UK hospital

Several people claiming to be relatives of the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban tried to enter the British hospital where she is being treated, an official said Tuesday.

The medical director of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham where Malala Yousafzai is in intensive care stressed that the incidents did not create any security concerns and police said nobody was arrested.

"We have had some, I guess I would say, irritating incidents overnight and I understand that a number of people have been arrested but there are no security concerns," hospital medical director David Rosser told journalists.

"I understand that a number of people turned up claiming to be members of Malala's family -- which we don't believe to be true -- and have been arrested."

However a police spokeswoman denied that any arrests were made.

"We are investigating what happened but I can confirm that there were no arrests," the spokeswoman for West Midlands Police told AFP.

The teenager spent a comfortable first night in the hospital, Rosser said, after she arrived in Birmingham in central England on a flight from Pakistan on Monday.

In an attack which outraged the world, Malala was shot on a school bus in the former Taliban stronghold of the Swat valley last Tuesday as a punishment for campaigning for the right to an education.

 

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