Update to this story.

(CBS News) – Doctors in Pakistan have managed to pull a bullet from the neck of a 14-year-old girl who was shot by a Taliban gunman Wednesday for speaking out in favor of girls’ education.

Malala Yousufzai remains in critical condition at a military hospital in Peshawar, however, following the shooting in her hometown of Mingora, in Pakistan’s Swat Valley – a former stronghold of the Taliban.

“She is improving. But she is still unconscious,” a regional Pakistani official told the Associated Press. “I can’t say a final word about her condition. A board of doctors is constantly examining her condition.”

A senior Pakistani official later told CBS News that Malala was “semi-conscious,” and had shown some level of response to doctors.

The Taliban came for Malala as she boarded a bus to go home from school. The gunman sought her out and shot her in the head and neck and wounded two other girls.

There is no doubt that Malala was the target. The gunman actually asked for her by name when he boarded the school bus.

Malala lived with the fear of being a Taliban target. That fear was evident in a Jan. 3, 2009, diary entry: “On my way home from school I heard a man saying…’I will kill you’. I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.”