A seven-year-old girl was deliberately starved to death while being kept prisoner in her own home by her mother and her partner, a court heard today.

Khyra Ishaq died of an infection after being starved over a period of "weeks or months," jurors were told at the start of a six-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court.

Khyra's mother Angela Gordon, 34, and Junaid Abuhamza, 30, both of Handsworth, Birmingham, deny murdering Khyra on May 17 last year.

Opening for the prosecution, Timothy Raggatt said Khyra had been starved to a point that was almost unheard of in Britain, the Press Association reported.

"The actual means or process which resulted in (Khyra's death) was brought about by a series of actions that were in effect the deliberate and calculated starvation of that little girl over a period, certainly of weeks, and very possibly months," Raggatt said.

He said the jury would be shown a photograph of Khyra when she was developing in a normal way and another shortly after her death.

Raggatt said the jury may have seen similar photographs taken to depict famine in Africa.

"The cruelty and maltreatment of that little girl, you may well come to think, was both ultimately calculated and obviously deliberate," he said.

Gordon and Abuhamza had a duty in law to care for Khyra, but had betrayed that duty in every possible sense, while also maltreating five other children in their control, the prosecutor said.

"All of them, as well as being starved, were subjected to violence of differing degrees," Raggatt added.

The jury was told that Abuhamza, who denies murder, had pleaded guilty on Wednesday to child cruelty charges relating to the five other children.

Gordon denies murder and five charges of child cruelty alleged to have been committed between December 2007 and May 17, 2008.