US congresswoman releases recovery pictures

In one of the post-recovery photos released on Sunday, Giffords appears with an unidentified older woman [AFP]

Gabrielle Giffords, the US Democratic congresswoman, who was almost killed in a shooting in January, has released her first post-recovery pictures.

The two pictures, showing the Representative from Arizona with short brown hair and wearing eyeglasses and a burgundy jacket, appeared on her Facebook page on Sunday. They were taken on May 17.

One photo shows a smiling Giffords alone. In the second, she appears with an unidentified older woman.

Giffords has been undergoing rehabilitation to regain movement on the right side of her body after a bullet tore through the left side of her brain in a shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona, on January 8.

Six people were killed, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl, when an armed man opened fire at a political meeting Giffords was holding with constituents outside a grocery store.

She underwent a cranioplasty to replace the part of her skull removed to allow space for her brain to swell.

Last month, Giffords travelled to Cape Canaveral, Florida, to see off her husband, space shuttle commander Mark Kelly, as he piloted shuttle Endeavour to the International Space Station on its last space mission.

Thirteen other people were wounded in the January 8 attack that resulted in the death of a child, a federal judge and one of Giffords’ aides.

Authorities have accused Jared Loughner, 22, of firing into the crowd, but he has sunsequently pleaded “not-guilty” and is being held at a Missouri facility.