Lebanese artist and filmmaker Ali Cherri is filing a civil complaint at a French war crimes unit alongside the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) over an Israeli strike on a building in central Beirut dating back to November 2024.
The bombing killed a number of Lebanese civilians, including his parents.
On 26 November 2024, one day before Israel and Hezbollah reached a ceasefire agreement, Israeli forces struck the Cherri family building in Beirut’s Nouweiri neighbourhood, killing parents Nadira and Mahmoud, as well as their live-in house helper, Birki Negesa.
Four other people were also killed in the strike.
The incident, probed by Amnesty International, found no evidence that Israel issued a prior evacuation warning to the building’s residents and found that Israel also failed to identify military targets or objectives in the building or its vicinity.
Israel often claims it is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure or members to justify its attacks across Lebanon, which have killed hundreds of civilians, including children.
Amnesty stated these findings alone show that the strike violated international humanitarian law and should be investigated as a war crime.
The NGO also said that if France’s War Crimes Unit prosecutors open an investigation into the Cherri incident, this would offer "a rare opportunity" to examine Israel’s actions in a European court, given "the general impunity it usually enjoys" to carry out attacks against civilians.
"This case could offer some form of accountability and reparation to victims of this deadly attack," Heba Morayef, Amnesty Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said.
Since October 2023, Amnesty International says it has documented serious and repeated violations of international humanitarian law by parties to the conflict in Lebanon, including numerous Israeli airstrikes on residential buildings that have killed scores of civilians.
Israel has intensified its decades-long conflict in Lebanon on two occasions in recent years, in 2023 amid the spillover of the war in the Gaza Strip, and since March this year, during the US-Israeli war on Iran and its spillover in the Middle East.
Despite a ceasefire put in place on 27 November 2024, Israel continued to carry out near-daily strikes on Lebanon.
More than 4,000 people have been killed since October 2023, while an additional 1,318 have been killed since 2 March alone amid the US-Israeli assault on Iran .
Amnesty also encouraged the Lebanese government to cooperate with any proceedings from the French War Crime Unit and "take other measures to seek accountability for Israel’s serious violations of international humanitarian law in Lebanon, including by accepting the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction, to ensure credible investigations and meaningful redress for victims".