A SIX-YEAR-OLD GIRL has died from dehydration under the rubble of her destroyed home in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the city council has said.

Mariupol is surrounded by Russian forces, who have bombarded the port city despite promises of a ceasefire to allow civilians to be evacuated.

It is not known how long the girl, named only as Tanya, had been under the ruins of her home before she died, but her mother was found dead at the scene.

“In the last minutes of her life she was alone, exhausted, frightened and terribly thirsty. This is just one of the many stories of Mariupol, which has been surviving a blockade for eight days,” Mayor Vadym Boychenko said on the city’s Telegram channel.

Residents of Mariupol have been cut off from electricity, water and gas. Communications are disrupted and attempts to deliver food and medicine have failed.

President Volodymyr Zelensky noted the death of the girl in a video message released to urge Ukraine’s Western partners to do more to help Kyiv counter Moscow’s invasion.

“Mariupol was surrounded, blocked, is being exhausted, tortured,” he declared.

“For the first time in dozens of years, perhaps for the first time since the Nazi invasion, a child died of dehydration. Hear me, today, dear partners! A child died of dehydration in 2022!”

People gather to receive humanitarian aid in Mariupol. Evgeniy Maloletka Evgeniy Maloletka

People help an elderly woman after the shelling of an apartment building in Mariupol. AP / PA Images AP / PA Images / PA Images

A man lights a fire under the kettle in a yard of an apartment building hit by shelling in Mariupol AP / PA Images AP / PA Images / PA Images

Russia agreed to set up “humanitarian corridors” from four cities on the 13th day of the war, even as the UN said the number of refugees flooding across Ukraine’s borders had passed two million.

Buses streamed out through an evacuation corridor from the north-eastern city of Sumy — where 21 people were killed in air strikes overnight — while civilians on foot took an unofficial escape route out of the bombarded Kyiv suburb of Irpin.

But Ukraine accused Russia of attacking another of the corridors leading from the beleaguered southern port city of Mariupol, where aid workers said tens of thousands were living in “apocalyptic” conditions.

Kyiv has branded the corridors from four cities a publicity stunt as many of the exit routes lead into Russia or its ally Belarus. Both sides accuse each other of ceasefire violations.