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French judges have opened a judicial investigation into a war crimes complaint over a 2024 Israeli strike on a residential building in Beirut that killed seven civilians, including the parents of French-Lebanese artist Ali Cherri, his lawyer said Tuesday.
Cherri filed the complaint as a civil party this year with the International Federation for Human Rights.
His lawyer, Clemence Bectarte, said the crimes against humanity unit of the Paris Judicial Court had appointed two investigating judges to the case, describing the move as a first involving alleged war crimes by Israeli forces in Lebanon.
According to the complaint, Cherri’s parents, aged 87 and 77, were among seven civilians killed when their 12-story apartment building in central Beirut was struck on Nov. 26, 2024. Three floors of the building were destroyed.
The strike took place just hours before a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah was due to take effect, the complaint said, citing research by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture.
Hezbollah had opened a front against Israel after the Gaza war began following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Fighting escalated into open war in September 2024, leaving more than 4,000 people dead in Lebanon and displacing more than 1 million.
Cherri said he pursued the case “for the dignity of all civilian victims.”
“For nearly two years, I have been fighting ... to ensure that the Israeli bombing that killed my parents and five other civilians does not go unpunished,” he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“What happened to my parents is not an isolated case,” he added, saying he hoped the investigation would challenge what he described as impunity for Israeli officials responsible for attacks on civilians in Lebanon and Palestine.
Several other cases involving alleged Israeli actions are also pending in France.
French-Lebanese national Mohamad H. has sought legal action after his mother, sister and two nephews were killed in strikes on the southern Lebanese city of Tyre during the night of April 16-17.
In another case, a French entrepreneur born in Lebanon accused the Israeli army of uprooting 600 century-old olive trees belonging to his family in a southern Lebanese village.
France’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office, which handles war crimes cases, has also opened an investigation into allegations of torture and war crimes related to Israeli forces’ interception of humanitarian flotillas bound for Gaza in 2025 and 2026.
The office has separately asked a Paris judge to open a war crimes investigation into the deaths of two French children in an Israeli strike on Gaza in October 2023, while ruling out genocide and crimes against humanity charges, according to sources close to the case.
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