French judges probe complaint of Israeli war crimes in Lebanon

France has opened a judicial investigation into a war crimes complaint over an Israeli strike on a residential building in Lebanon, a lawyer told AFP on Tuesday.

French-Lebanese artist Ali Cherri, whose parents were killed in the Beirut strike in 2024, filed the complaint as a civil party this year with the International Federation for Human Rights, Cherri's lawyer Clemence Bectarte explained.

The crimes against humanity unit of the Paris Judicial Court has appointed two investigating judges to the case, she added, hailing the move as "a first".

Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in two rounds of full-scale war since the outbreak of Israel's war on Gaza in October 2023, which started with tit-for-tat clashes between the two, though hostilities escalated into open war in September 2024 and have left more than 4,000 dead in Lebanon and forced more than a million people to flee.

Seven civilians, including Cherri's father and mother, aged 87 and 77, were killed in the bombing of their 12-storey apartment building in central Beirut on 26 November 2024, according to the complaint seen by AFP. Three floors were destroyed.

The strike occurred "just a few hours before the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect," the complaint stated, citing detailed research by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture into the incident.

*AFP *has reached out to the Israeli military for comment.

Cherri told AFP he had taken legal action "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 said.

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

Several investigations underway

While the judicial investigation marks a first over alleged war crimes by Israeli forces in Lebanon, other cases are pending.

French-Lebanese man Mohamad H., represented by lawyer Emmanuel Daoud, has sought action after losing his mother, sister, and two nephews in strikes on the southern city of Tyre during the night of 16-17 April.

In another case, a French entrepreneur born in Lebanon has accused the Israeli army of uprooting 600-century-old olive trees belonging to his family in a village in southern Lebanon.

France's National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor's Office (PNAT), which handles war crimes, has opened an investigation into allegations of torture and war crimes related to the Israeli forces' interception of humanitarian flotillas bound for Gaza in 2025 and 2026.

The PNAT also asked a Paris judge to open a war crimes investigation into the deaths of two French children in an Israeli bombing in Gaza in October 2023, while ruling out charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, according to sources close to the case.