THE horrific toll of war on the children of Ukraine was laid bare yesterday, with a three-month-old baby among the victims of a missile attack on Odesa.

Five people were killed, including the infant, in the Russian missile attack on Odesa, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff said.

Reports also emerged of the death of two young actresses who had been performers at Mariupol’s theatre before the Russian bombardment of their city.

Mayoral adviser Petro Andryushchenko said: “War takes away the best.

“Two girls, two charming little actresses Elizaveta and Sonya, died in Mariupol,” he said on the Telegram messaging service.

Women and children who are trapped in Mariupol’s besieged Azovstal steel plant have begged for help, according to footage which has emerged from the factory.

Russian forces yesterday resumed attacks on the steel plant in the shattered port city, Ukrainian officials said.

It appeared to be a bid to eliminate the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the strategic city the Kremlin claims its military has otherwise seized.

A planned evacuation of civilians from the city via a humanitarian corridor did not go ahead.

Some 200 people had gathered at a meeting point to be evacuated by bus to Zaporizhzhia, but they were dispersed by Russian forces, who warned them of impending shelling.

An estimated 1000 civilians were sheltering in the Azovstal plant alongside around 2000 remaining Ukrainian fighters.

Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu told Russian President Vladimir Putin last week that the whole of Mariupol, with the exception of Azovstal, had been “liberated” by the Russians.

At the time, Putin ordered him not to send Russian troops into the plant but instead to block off the facility, an apparent attempt to starve out the Ukrainians and force them to surrender.

Yesterday the Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s national guard, which has members holed up in the plant, released footage of around two dozen women and children, some of whom said they had been in the mill’s underground tunnels for two months and longed to see the sun.

“We want to see peaceful skies, we want to breathe in fresh air,” one woman in the video said. “You have simply no idea what it means for us to simply eat, drink some sweetened tea. For us, it is already happiness.”

More than 100,000 people – down from a pre-war population of about 430,000 – are believed to be trapped in Mariupol with little food, water or heat, according to authorities.

More than 20,000 civilians have already been killed in Mariupol during the nearly two-month siege.

Satellite images released last week showed what appeared to be mass graves near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying thousands of civilians to conceal the slaughter taking place there.

Ukraine estimated that the graves could hold 9000 bodies. The Kremlin did not respond to the pictures.