PARIS — France's War Crimes Unit has opened a judicial investigation into a deadly Israeli strike on a civilian building in central Beirut in November 2024, Amnesty International announced on Tuesday, November 3, responding to the news reported by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). The investigation follows a legal complaint filed by French-Lebanese artist and filmmaker Ali Cherri and FIDH.

Source: Amnesty International

The civil complaint was filed on 1 April 2026 before France's War Crimes Unit, Amnesty said. Two judges in the crimes against humanity unit of the Paris Judicial Court have been appointed to investigate the case, according to Drop Site News's summary of the development.

Source: Amnesty International

The strike of 26 November 2024

At 5:30 p.m. on 26 November 2024 — ten and a half hours before a ceasefire came into effect — an Israeli air strike hit a 12-storey apartment building in Beirut's Nouweiri neighbourhood, killing at least seven civilians, all residents of the building, and causing three floors to collapse and severely damaging a fourth, Amnesty International's February 2025 investigation established. Among the dead were Ali Cherri's parents, Nadira Hayek, 78, and Mahmoud Naim Cherri, 88, and their live-in helper Birki Negesa.

Source: Amnesty International

Amnesty's investigation found that no effective advance warning was given and uncovered no evidence of a military objective in the vicinity, providing reasonable grounds, the organisation said, to conclude that the attack breached international humanitarian law and should be investigated as a war crime. Those findings are allegations that the French investigation will now test; no court has made a finding in the case.

Source: Amnesty International

The charge, and why France can hear the case

Ali Cherri was able to file the complaint in France because of his dual French-Lebanese nationality. On that jurisdictional basis, the appointed investigative judges will investigate the bombing of his apartment on charges of “intentionally directing an attack against a civilian object, amounting to a war crime”, according to the case file cited by Amnesty. FIDH's explainer on the complaint notes that this war crime is punishable under French criminal law by fifteen years of imprisonment, and that the complaint also draws on digital reconstruction work by Forensic Architecture.

Source: FIDH

“The opening of this judicial investigation by the French War Crimes Unit is a critical, long-overdue step towards making a dent in the wall of pervasive impunity enjoyed by Israeli forces for war crimes committed in Lebanon,” said Heba Morayef, Amnesty International's Regional Director. “For victims and their families, this case offers a rare and vital avenue for truth, justice, and long-awaited accountability through a European court.”

Source: Amnesty International

The probe opens while fighting in Lebanon continues. Israeli forces launched multiple attacks across southern Lebanon on Tuesday, according to Lebanon's National News Agency, in what Lebanese reporting describes as continuing violations of the ceasefire. Amnesty said that since October 2023 it has documented repeated unlawful attacks by Israeli forces in Lebanon, and that victims continue to be denied justice, truth or reparations — claims Israel disputes in the wider conflict; the reports on the French investigation carried no Israeli government statement on the probe.

Source: Amnesty International