New York - France's ambassador says the members of the UN Security Council fell silent after viewing a series of ghastly photographs of dead Syrian civil war victims.
The pictures show people who were emaciated, with their bones protruding, and some bearing the marks of strangulation.
Ambassador Gerard Araud says the pall of silence lingered, and then questions slowly began about the credibility of the slides of the dead, who offer mute testimony to the savagery of a Syrian civil war in which more than 150 000 have died.
The council members saw more photos than the 10 publicly released in January in a study funded by the government of Qatar, a major backer of the opposition and one of the nations most deeply involved in the Syrian conflict.