Civil defense members and rescuers work at the site of an Israeli strike in Beirut's Basta neighborhood, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, Lebanon, November 23, 2024. THAIER AL-SUDANI/REUTERS
A complaint filed on Thursday, April 2, 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 (FIDH), said the complaint was filed with France's war crimes unit in Paris against unknown perpetrators over the strike in 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 pm 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.
