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UN Security Council to view photos of Syrian dead

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council will meet privately to view projected slides of Syrians tortured and killed in the country's civil war.

France is hosting the meeting in the hopes of pushing an effort to refer the Syrian government to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

France says the photos to be viewed are part of a collection of 55,000 digital images of Syrians slain by President Bashar Assad's regime.

The bodies of the young men in the photographs are emaciated, their bones protruding. Some bear marks of strangulation. Others have vivid bruises and welts from being beaten.

Syria's Justice Ministry has dismissed them as "politicized and lacking objectiveness." The ministry says some of the dead were militants killed in battle and others were killed by militant groups.