An Saturday, 4th November 2023 a 17-year-old girl from the Abu Alba family’s was injured in an alleged Israeli airstrike and/or artillery strike that hit a bus carrying a group of American citizens to the Rafah border crossing as it passed along al-Bahr street, south of Gaza City.

Numerous sources, including the Palestinian Information Centre and Al-Jazeera Palestine, shared a video from inside a hospital in the aftermath of the incident, which depicted the injured 17-year-old girl from the Abu Alba family. In the video, the girl’s mother described the events. The strike, described either as an incident of bombing or shelling depending on different sources, hit a bus carrying American citizens to the Rafah border crossing, who had reportedly been instructed to travel by the US Embassy.

Many of the sources that shared the video of the incident’s aftermath included a quote from the injured girl’s mother, who said, “We have American citizenship and the embassy called us and told us that our names were on the travel list to leave the Gaza Strip, and we had to move. When we reached al-Bahr Street, south of Gaza City, we were subjected to direct Israeli shelling, and my daughter was injured.”

In the video itself, the injured girl’s distressed mother further described how her 17-year-old daughter’s hand had been severed in the strike. She recounted how the bus was in flames whilst they escaped it, and how they fled on foot to the hospital. She also held up the family’s US passports to the camera. The injured girl appeared to be conscious.

Where sources identified the belligerent, all sources attributed the strike to the Israeli military.