French Judges Open War Crimes Investigation Into Israeli Strike That Killed Seven in Beirut

On 27 November 2024, around 5:30 p.m., an Israeli air strike hit a 12-storey residential building in Beirut's Noueiri district. Three floors collapsed. Seven civilians died, including the parents of Franco-Lebanese artist Ali Cherri. The strike came roughly ten and a half hours before a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect.

Two French judges have now opened a judicial investigation into the bombing as a suspected war crime, according to court records and statements from Cherri's legal team reported by Middle East Eye and AFP. The probe follows a complaint filed by Cherri and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in April.

"For almost two years, I have been fighting to ensure that the Israeli bombing that killed my parents and five other civilians does not go unpunished," Cherri told AFP.

FIDH and Cherri's lawyer, Clemence Bectarte, say it is the first time French courts have opened a judicial investigation into an alleged Israeli army crime in Lebanon since Israel's operations there began in October 2023. "To our knowledge, this is the very first judicial investigation opened into the crimes committed by the Israeli army in Lebanon since October 2023," Bectarte said in a statement published by FIDH.

The case rests on research by Amnesty International and the investigative group Forensic Architecture. In an April report, Amnesty said its researchers found no evidence of a military target near the residential building at the time of the strike, and documented evidence of a US-manufactured GBU-39 precision-guided bomb at the site. Amnesty said there was a "reasonable basis" to suspect a breach of international humanitarian law and called for the attack to be investigated as a possible war crime.

France's National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (Pnat), which handles war crimes matters, asked for the judicial investigation to be opened in September, an AFP source close to the case said, after prosecutors identified "serious and consistent" indications the alleged offenses had occurred. The investigation is built on allegations of deliberately directing an attack against civilian property, a potential war crime under French law.

The scope is narrow by necessity. Cherri holds dual French and Lebanese nationality, but FIDH says French courts lack jurisdiction over the deaths of non-French nationals, including his parents. That has limited the case to the bombing of his apartment rather than a homicide complaint over the seven deaths.

"What happened to my parents is not an isolated case," Cherri said. "I hope that this investigation will help to break the impunity enjoyed by Israeli officials responsible for attacks against civilians in Lebanon and Palestine."

The Pnat has also opened preliminary investigations into allegations of torture and war crimes tied to Israeli interceptions of Gaza-bound humanitarian flotillas in 2025 and 2026, AFP reported. Separately, at the end of 2025, prosecutors asked a Paris investigating judge to open a war crimes probe into the deaths of two French children killed in an Israeli bombing in Gaza in October 2023, though sources close to that case said charges of genocide and crimes against humanity had been ruled out.