France opens war crimes investigation after Beirut strike that killed seven people

First foreign investigation into strikes in Lebanon

The crimes against humanity unit of the Paris judicial court has appointed two investigating judges in the case concerning the killing of the parents of French-Lebanese Ali Sherry in an Israeli strike. Sherry filed a complaint as a civil party earlier this year together with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). “I am doing this for justice for my parents. And we, the victims, still believe in justice. It is the only path left to us,” he told The National. His lawyer, Clémence Bectarte, called the decision the first publicly known investigation opened abroad into alleged Israeli war crimes in Lebanon; its aim is to identify those bearing the highest level of responsibility, including political and military officials.

The precedent of the Syria cases

Bectarte noted that French investigations into the atrocities of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria set a “precedent”: they led to several arrest warrants for Assad and other senior officials. Sherry's case is being handled by the same unit that issued the warrant in the Syria cases, and, in her words, “something similar could happen in this investigation, this time against Israeli officials.” The French court's jurisdiction rests on Sherry's dual French-Lebanese citizenship: Lebanese without a second nationality have virtually no domestic legal avenues to seek justice.

Circumstances of the strike

Sherry's father and mother, aged 87 and 77, were killed on 26 November 2024 in a strike on a 12-storey residential building in central Beirut that also claimed the lives of five other civilians — just hours before the ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel took effect. An Amnesty International investigation found that at least seven civilians were killed — all residents of the building; “there was no effective advance warning to civilians, and there was no evidence of a military target in or near the building at the time of the attack,” said the organisation's researcher Sahar Mandour. According to her, the strike illustrates “a pattern of indiscriminate attacks or direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects.”

Conflict context and the legal vacuum

Hezbollah began attacks on Israel the day after the war in Gaza started; the clashes escalated into a full-scale war in September 2024, and large-scale violence resumed on 2 March 2026. According to Lebanon's Health Ministry, Israeli attacks have killed nearly 9,000 people in Lebanon since October 2023; a mediation agreement involving the US brought a fragile truce in June. Hundreds of thousands remain displaced from the south of the country, where Israel holds about 7% of the territory in a so-called “security zone.” Lebanon is not a party to the ICC's Rome Statute, and a disputed article 13 of the framework agreement with Israel obliges the parties to suspend legal proceedings during negotiations — which is why complaints abroad remain almost the only available mechanism.

Other cases and pressure on Lebanon

The investigation may open the way for other victims: according to The National, another French-Lebanese citizen, through lawyer Emmanuel Daoud, filed a complaint after the death of his mother, sister and two nephews in strikes on Tyre in the night of 17 April 2026, while another, through lawyers William Bourdon and Nicolas Buzen, is seeking action against the Israeli army over the uprooting of 600 centuries-old olive trees belonging to his family in a southern village. Sahar Mandour noted that the growing number of cases abroad increases pressure on the Lebanese authorities to end the accountability vacuum and reinforces calls for Lebanon to adopt the Rome Statute and international jurisdiction over crimes on its territory.

Show caption: A firefighter walks through destroyed cars after an Israeli …

Show caption: A Lebanese flag placed on a damaged olive tree in a southern…