In an apparent legal first, the French War Crimes Unit has opened an investigation into the 2024 Israeli bombing of a Beirut residential building where the family of French Lebanese filmmaker and artist Ali Cherri lived. The announcement comes six months after Cherri and the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) filed a complaint alleging that the Israeli military intentionally targeted a civilian structure, killing seven people, including the artist’s parents, which amounted to a war crime.

The complaint centers on the Israeli military’s bombing of a residential building in Beirut’s Noueiri neighborhood, just hours before a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah was set to take effect. The strike destroyed the ninth-floor apartment home to the artist’s parents, Mahmoud Naim Cherri and Nadira Hayek, as well as Birki Negesa, a domestic worker employed by the couple.…