LONDON — A Pakistani girl whose defiance of the Taliban turned her into an international icon is headed toward recovery once she undergoes a final surgery to reconstruct her skull, doctors said Wednesday.

Dave Rosser of Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital said Malala Yousufzai, 15, needs the operation to replace the bone shattered when a Taliban gunman, angered at her objection to the group’s restrictions on girls’ education, fired a bullet through her skull. Rosser said that Malala had made a ‘‘remarkable recovery.’’