PARIS — A complaint filed Thursday in France seeks a war crimes investigation into an Israeli strike on a Beirut apartment building in November 2024 said to have killed seven civilians, including the parents of a French-Lebanese artist, a human rights group said.
The artist, Ali Cherri, and the International Federation for Human Rights, or FIDH, said the complaint was filed with France’s war crimes unit in Paris against unknown perpetrators over the strike in central Beirut’s Noueiri neighborhood, just hours before a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect.
The human rights group said the strike hit at about 5:30 p.m. and destroyed a ninth-floor apartment owned by Cherri, as well as apartments on the seventh and eighth floors. The group identified the dead as Cherri’s parents, Mahmoud Naim Cherri and Nadira Hayek, and domestic worker Birki Negesa, among others.
“We want an investigation to help us clear up the facts and understand why civilians were targeted in this horrific way,” Cherri told The Associated Press.
The filing argues that the bombing of a civilian building could constitute a war crime under French criminal law and international humanitarian law. FIDH said it draws in part on analysis by human rights groups Forensic Architecture and Amnesty International.
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Amnesty International said Thursday it supported the case and that its own investigation found no evidence of a military objective in or near the building at the time of the strike. It also said civilians received no effective advance warning and that the attack should be investigated as a war crime.
On 2 April 2026, supported by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Ali Cherri, son of Mahmoud and Nadira, filed a complaint for war crimes against persons unknown, with the Paris Judicial Court’s Specialized Unit for Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes.… pic.twitter.com/CyP8zVf6Qy
— Pheebs (@galpalpheebs) April 2, 2026
Israel’s Foreign Ministry referred questions about the case to Israel’s military, which did not immediately respond Thursday, the first day of the Passover holiday in Israel. The military has previously said it follows international legal norms, strikes only legitimate military targets, and has stressed that Hezbollah operates in civilian areas.
According to FIDH, French courts do not have jurisdiction over the killings themselves because the dead were not French nationals. But it said Cherri’s dual French-Lebanese nationality gives French authorities jurisdiction to investigate the bombing of the apartment he owned.
The group also said no legal proceedings had been initiated in Lebanon or abroad to date over the attack.
“It’s going to be a long process, and probably with no cooperation from the Israelis,” Cherri said. “But it’s important to seek justice and to stop the cycle of impunity.”
Cherri, a Paris-based artist and filmmaker originally from Beirut, has said he is seeking recognition and accountability over the attack that killed his family members and other civilians.
Rescue workers and people search for victims at the site of an Israeli airstrike that hit central Beirut, Lebanon, November 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
The strike came during the 2023-2024 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which was launched after the Iran-backed terror group began firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas after it led the October 7, 2023, attacks and massacres in southern Israel.
Some 80,000 residents of northern Israel were displaced due to the terror group’s near-daily attacks.
Israel responded with airstrikes and shelling, and the low-level conflict escalated into full-scale war in September 2024, with an Israeli ground operation in southern Lebanon and the assassination of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The US-brokered ceasefire with Hezbollah came into effect in November 2024.
Around 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon during that conflict, according to tallies that don’t differentiate between civilians and fighters, while 47 Israeli civilians and some 80 Israeli soldiers were killed.
Since the US and Israel attacked Iran on Feburary 28, a new war has erupted between Israel and Hezbollah. On March 2, Hezbollah began firing salvos of missiles across the border. Israel has since launched aerial bombardment of large swaths of Lebanon and launched a ground invasion. More than 1,200 people have been killed and more than a million displaced in Lebanon to date, according to Beirut.
Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike hits a building near the airport road in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
There have been previous incidents of activist groups filing war crimes complaints and requests for the arrest of Israeli soldiers visiting various countries, primarily by the Hind Rajab Foundation. The foundation, a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel legal group based in Belgium and named after a 6-year-old Gazan girl killed in January 2024, has filed dozens of criminal complaints against Israeli soldiers and officials visiting or stationed in European countries over the past two years.
While the group has spurred European authorities to detain a number of IDF soldiers and forced a soldier visiting Brazil to flee back to Israel, fearing arrest, it has been unsuccessful in court, and no soldier targeted by the group has been prosecuted for war crimes or any other alleged offenses committed in Gaza.
Israel vehemently denies it has committed war crimes or genocide in Gaza, and says it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities, stressing that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.
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