Some have compared her to Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani woman who was shot by Taliban attackers in 2012 and later won the Nobel Peace Prize.

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"Breshna is full of courage and inspiration," tweeted Sahar Fetrat, a feminist and activist in Kabul. "She definitely is Afghanistan's Malala. More power to her."

Musazai said the admiring tweets and posts "gave me more courage to do better than this in the future."

Musazai comes from a middle-class family who supported her education. "We wanted her to study so she would become independent in the future," said her father, Saleh Mohammad Malang, a former member of parliament.

She began studying law at American University, a modern coeducational campus.

But on August 24, 2016, as she made her way to the campus mosque for evening prayers, Taliban assailants shot their way into the compound. Students hid in classrooms or tried to escape. Musazai, barefoot and slowed by her paralysis in one leg, struggled to reach the nearest building.

In a hallway an insurgent shot her in the leg. She fell and pretended to be dead, and he shot her again in the foot. Despite the pain, she did not move for hours.

"I didn't want them to know I was alive," she said.

Finally, around midnight, a police officer entered the building and began firing blindly in the dark hallway. The bullets passed directly above where she lay.

"I thought I was going to die for sure," Musazai said.

Instead, the officer carried her to an ambulance. One leg was broken and two of her toes had been shot off.

Afghanistan has one of the world's highest illiteracy rates among women, but there are also an increasing number of women such as Musazai pursuing higher education despite security threats and social restrictions.

In March, Jahantab Ahmadi, 25, an Afghan mother of three, made headlines after a photo showed her nursing her baby while taking a university entrance exam. The photo went viral on social media, and supporters set up an online account to help pay for her education.

Musazai, who needs further surgery on her toes, says she is determined to keep going. As soon as she is able to walk, she said, she plans to seek a master's degree in law or human rights.