❗️French court opens war crimes probe into Israeli airstrike that killed Lebanese artist's parents in Beirut French judicial authorities in Paris have formally launched a war crimes investigation targeting the Israeli military over a lethal late-2024 airstrike on a residential building in Beirut, according to AFP. The opening of the probe follows a criminal lawsuit filed by French-Lebanese visual artist Ali Cherri, whose parents were killed when Israeli forces bombed their home in the Lebanese capital. The complaint accuses the Israeli war ministry and commanding officers of committing war crimes and deliberate attacks against civilians, leveraging France's universal jurisdiction laws that permit domestic courts to prosecute grave violations of international law involving French nationals. Legal representatives for Cherri emphasized that the targeted apartment structure housed non-combatants and contained no military infrastructure, rendering the bombardment a blatant transgression of the Geneva Conventions. Human rights lawyers working on the case noted that the formal opening of the investigation opens the door for French magistrate judges to issue subpoenas, gather forensic evidence, and potentially issue international arrest warrants for implicated Israeli operational commanders.