Kabul (AFP) - An Afghan judge on Sunday sentenced seven men to death for the gang-rape of four women in a case that sparked nationwide outrage and highlighted the violence women face despite reforms since the Taliban era.

The seven men, who stood in the dock dressed in brown traditional clothing, were found guilty of kidnapping and attacking the female members of a group that was driving home to Kabul from a wedding.

President Hamid Karzai on Sunday had called for the men to be hanged. The death sentences were technically handed down for the crime of armed robbery rather than rape.

In a televised trial that lasted only a few hours, the court heard that the men, who had obtained police uniforms and were armed with guns, stopped a convoy of cars in the early hours of August 23.

They dragged the four women out of the vehicles, robbed them, beat them up and then raped them. One of the women was reported to be pregnant.

"We went to Paghman with our families. On the way back, they took us," one victim, dressed in a burqa, told the packed courtroom as noisy protesters outside demanded the death penalty.

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(From L-R) Azizullah, Samiullah, Mustafa, and Jamil, four of seven men convicted of gang-raping four …

"One of them put his gun to my head, the other one took all our jewellery, and the rest started what you already know," she said.

Applause erupted inside the court after Kabul police chief Zahir Zahir called for the men to be hanged.

"We want them to be hanged in public so that it will be a lesson for others," he said.

"We arrested them with police uniforms. They confessed to their crime within two hours of their arrest."

The judge said the seven had the right to appeal against their sentences.

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Jamil, one of seven men sentenced to death for allegedly gang-raping four women on August 23, stands …

Under Afghan law, the president must also sign a death warrant for an execution to go ahead.

- Women's rights under threat? -

Women's rights have been central to the multi-billion-dollar international development effort in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

Under the Taliban's harsh version of Sunni Islamic law, women were forced to wear the all-enveloping burqa, banned from jobs, and forbidden even to leave the house without a male chaperone.

Rape and violence against women and girls was rife, according to Amnesty International, which says that Afghan women are still routinely discriminated against, abused and persecuted.

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Azizullah (L), the leader of seven men who gang-raped four women on August 23, testifies in court as …

The Taliban, who launched a resilient insurgency after being ousted, threaten a comeback as US-led NATO combat troops withdraw from the country later this year.

Despite 13 years of fighting, foreign forces have failed to quash the insurgents, who have gained ground in a series of recent offensives.

The gang-rape unleashed a wave of public anger via street protests, the media and the Internet, echoing the response to recent similar crimes in India -- including the fatal attack on a student on a bus in New Delhi in 2012 that provoked headlines worldwide.

Last week the US embassy in Kabul condemned "the brutal robbery, beating, and rape" and called on Afghan authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Hasina Safi, head of the Afghan Women's Network action group, said she welcomed the death penalties.

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Nazar Mohammad (R) and Qaisullah, two of seven men who gang-raped four women on August 23, look on d …

"We consider it a big step and achievement for the women of Afghanistan. I wish we had more such cases decided on openly, so that we didn't have to suffer such heinous acts."

But Human Rights Watch said Afghanistan's justice system had failed to follow due process over the case and that all accused deserved a fair trial.

President Karzai's personal intervention came as he waits to step down after ruling Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban.

The June 14 election to choose his successor has become engulfed in a prolonged dispute over fraud, with both of the two candidates claiming victory.

The United Nations has expressed fears the political stand-off could trigger a spiral of instability and a return to the lawless chaos of the 1990s civil war that allowed the Taliban to rise to power.

A fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) holds an ISIL flag and a weapon on a street in the city of Mosul, June 23, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer

By Hameedullah Khan and Saud Mehsud

PESHAWAR/DERA ISMAIL KHAN Pakistan (Reuters) - Islamic State pamphlets and flags have appeared in parts of Pakistan and India, alongside signs that the ultra-radical group is inspiring militants even in the strongholds of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

A splinter group of Pakistan's Taliban insurgents, Jamat-ul Ahrar, has already declared its support for the well-funded and ruthless Islamic State fighters, who have captured large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria in a drive to set up a self-declared caliphate.

"IS (Islamic State) is an Islamic Jihadi organization working for the implementation of the Islamic system and creation of the Caliphate," Jamat-ul Ahrar's leader and a prominent Taliban figure, Ehsanullah Ehsan, told Reuters by telephone. "We respect them. If they ask us for help, we will look into it and decide."

Islamist militants of various hues already hold sway across restive and impoverished areas of South Asia, but Islamic State, with its rapid capture of territory, beheadings and mass executions, is starting to draw a measure of support among younger fighters in the region.

Al Qaeda's ageing leaders, mostly holed up in the lawless region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, are increasingly seen as stale, tired and ineffectual on hardcore jihadi social media forums and Twitter accounts that incubate potential militant recruits.

Security experts say Islamic State's increasing lure may have prompted al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri to announce the establishment of an Indian franchise to raise the flag of jihad across South Asia, home to more than 400 million Muslims.

PAMPHLETS, CAR STICKERS

Seeking to boost its influence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, a local cell with allegiance to Islamic State has been distributing pamphlets in the Pakistani city of Peshawar and eastern Afghanistan in the past few weeks, residents said.

The 12-page booklet called "Fatah" (Victory), published in the Pashto and Dari languages of Afghanistan, was being mainly distributed in Afghan refugee camps on the outskirts of Peshawar.

The pamphlet’s logo features an AK-47 assault rifle and calls on local residents to support the militant group. Cars with IS stickers have also been spotted around Peshawar.

Sameeulah Hanifi, a prayer leader in a Peshawar neighborhood populated mainly by Afghans, said the pamphlets were being distributed by a little-known local group called Islami Khalifat, an outspoken Islamic State supporter.

"I know some people who received copies of this material either from friends or were given at mosques by unidentified IS workers," he told Reuters.

A Pakistani security official said the pamphlets came from Afghanistan’s neighboring Kunar province where a group of Taliban fighters was spotted distributing them.

"We came across them 22 days ago and we are aware of their presence here," said the official. "Pakistani security agencies are working on the Pakistan-Afghan border and have arrested a number of Taliban fighters and recovered CDs, maps, literature in Persian, Pashto and Dari."

"We will not permit them to work in our country and anyone who is involved in this will be crushed by the government."

RECRUITMENT IN INDIA

Signs of Islamic State's influence are also being seen in Kashmir, the region claimed by both India and Pakistan and the scene of a decades-long battle by militants against Indian rule. Security officials in Indian-held Kashmir say they have been trying to find out the level of support for the Arab group after IS flags and banners appeared in the summer.

Intelligence and police sources in New Delhi and Kashmir said the flags were first seen on June 27 in a part of the state capital Srinagar, and then in July when India's only Muslim-majority region was marking Islam's most holy day, Eid al-Fitr.

Some IS graffiti also appeared on walls of buildings in Srinagar. A police officer said youngsters carrying Islamic State flags at anti-India rallies had been identified but no arrests had been made.

Another officer who questions people detained in protests against Indian rule, many of them teenagers, said most were only focused on winning independence from India.

"The majority of them have no religious bent of mind," he said. "Some of them, less than 1 percent, of course are religious and radicalized and end up joining militant ranks. They are influenced by al Qaeda, Taliban, Islamic State."

Islamic State is also trying to lure Muslims in mainland India, who make up the world's third-biggest Islamic population but who have largely stayed away from foreign battlefields despite repeated calls from al Qaeda.

In mid-July, an IS recruitment video surfaced online with subtitles in the Indian languages of Hindi, Tamil and Urdu in which a self-declared Canadian fighter, dressed in war fatigues and flanked by a gun and a black flag, urged Muslims to enlist in global jihad.

That came out just weeks after four families in a Mumbai suburb reported to the police that their sons had gone missing, with one leaving behind a note about fighting to defend Islam. It soon turned out that the men had joined a pilgrimage to Baghdad.

They later broke off from the tour group and never returned. Indian intelligence believe the men ended up in Mosul, the Iraqi city captured by Islamic State in June, and that one of them may have died in a bomb blast.

Last week, the Times of India newspaper said four young men, including two engineering college students, were arrested in the eastern city of Calcutta as they tried to make their way to neighboring Bangladesh to join a recruiter for Islamic State based there.

"It's not just these four, but our investigations have found that there could be more youngsters who are in touch with IS handlers and this is a bit of a scary proportion," the newspaper quoted a senior officer as saying.

A top official at India's Intelligence Bureau in New Delhi told Reuters: "The problem is we know so little about this network or who is acting on their behalf here.

"We know roughly where the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Indian Mujahideen (organizations backed by Pakistan) support groups are, where they make contacts. But this is a different challenge. Youth getting radicalized in their homes on the Internet, in chatrooms and through Facebook are not easy to track."

(Reporting by Asim Tanveer, Hameed Ullah, Saud Mehsud and Maria Golovnina,; Additional reporting by Fayaz Bukhari in SRINAGAR, Writing and additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani in KABUL and NEW DELHI; Editing by Maria Golovnina and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

By Gabriela Baczynska and Aleksandar Vasovic

DONETSK/MARIUPOL Ukraine (Reuters) - A woman died and at least four people were wounded when fighting flared again in eastern Ukraine overnight into Sunday, jeopardizing a ceasefire struck less than two days earlier between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists.

The accord, brokered by envoys from Ukraine, the separatist leadership, Russia and Europe's OSCE security watchdog, is part of a peace plan intended to end a five-month conflict that has killed nearly 3,000 people and caused the sharpest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War.

Shelling resumed near the port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov late on Saturday, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko had agreed in a phone call that the truce was holding.

Fighting also broke out early on Sunday on the northern outskirts of rebel-held Donetsk, the region's industrial hub. A Reuters reporter saw plumes of black smoke filling the sky near the airport, which has been in the hands of government forces.

"Listen to the sound of the ceasefire," joked one armed rebel. "There's a proper battle going on there."

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Men inspect a burnt out Ukrainian tank in the village of Kominternovo, on the outskirts of the south …

The two cities then turned quiet for much of Sunday, but a Reuters witness in the early evening reported several mortar blasts within the city confines of Donetsk. They damaged a bridge where the rebels had erected a roadblock.

In a new report on the conflict, Amnesty International accused both the rebels and Ukrainian militia of war crimes and it published satellite images it said showed a build-up of Russian armor and artillery in eastern Ukraine.

"Our evidence shows that Russia is fuelling the conflict, both through direct interference and by supporting the separatists in the east. Russia must stop the steady flow of weapons and other support to an insurgent force heavily implicated in gross human rights violations," Amnesty's secretary-general, Salil Shetty, said in a statement.

Moscow denies dispatching forces or arming the rebels despite what NATO says is overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

WESTERN ARMS - OR NOT?

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Ukrainian soldiers inspect a damaged tank on the outskirts of the southern coastal town of Mariupol, …

Poroshenko spent Thursday and Friday at a NATO summit in Wales at which U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders urged Putin to pull forces out of Ukraine. NATO also approved wide-ranging plans to boost its defenses in Eastern Europe in response to the Ukraine crisis.

A senior aide to Poroshenko, Yuri Lytsenko, wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday that Kiev had reached agreement at the summit on receiving weapons and military advisers from five allies - the United States, France, Italy, Poland and Norway.

He gave no further details, but four of the five countries denied offering such assistance.

A senior Obama administration said the United States "has not changed policy" toward Ukraine, which thus far has been to provide only non-lethal military assistance.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not appear to rule out the possibility that Washington might at some point choose to offer arms to Kiev.

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Destroyed Ukrainian artillery pieces are seen on the outskirts of the southern coastal town of Mariu …

The official said the United States had so far given $70 million in security assistance to Ukraine and noted that U.S. President Barack Obama had said he was "looking at what more we can do."

Officials in Italy, Norway and Poland issued similar denials.

"Italy, along with other EU and NATO countries, is preparing a package of non-lethal military aid such as bullet-proof vests and helmets for Ukraine," an official at Italy's Defence Ministry said.

In France, an aide at the president's Elysee Palace declined to comment.

NATO officials have said the alliance will not send arms to non-member Ukraine, but they have also said individual allies may do so if they wish. A NATO official contacted by Reuters on Sunday about the Lytsenko comment reiterated that line.

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Soldiers of Ukrainian self-defence battalion "Azov" walk near a checkpoint in the southern …

Russia is fiercely opposed to closer ties between Ukraine and the NATO alliance.

The Ukraine conflict has revived talk of a new Cold War as the West accuses Putin of deliberately destabilizing the former Soviet republic of 46 million people. Ukraine's prime minister accused Putin of striving to recreate the Soviet Union.

Putin says he is defending the interests of ethnic Russians facing discrimination and oppression in Ukraine since protesters toppled Kiev's pro-Russian president in February.

Putin has seen his popularity in Russia soar since Moscow annexed Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which has a Russian majority, in March.

MUTUAL RECRIMINATIONS

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Soldiers of the Ukrainian self-defence battalion "Azov" sit in an armoured personnel carri …

Both the rebels and the Ukrainian military insisted on Sunday they were strictly observing the ceasefire and blamed their opponents for any violations.

"As far as I know, the Ukrainian side is not observing the ceasefire. We have wounded on our side at various points. We are observing the ceasefire," Vladimir Antyufeyev, deputy premier of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic", told Reuters.

Earlier, government forces said they had come under artillery fire east of Mariupol, a crucial port for Ukrainian steel exports. In the days before the ceasefire, they had been trying to repel a big rebel offensive against the city.

The shelling in Mariupol claimed the first civilian casualty since the ceasefire began. Local officials confirmed the death of a 33-year-old woman early on Sunday and said at least four other people had been wounded.

"They, terrorists, Russians, are trying to scare us. They have no respect for the ceasefire. They are lying all the time. They are people with no honor," said Slavik, a Ukrainian soldier armed with a machinegun.

A Reuters reporter at the scene, a few km (miles) from the center of the city of 500,000, saw fires raging just before midnight on Saturday as Ukrainian reinforcements raced east toward the demarcation line separating the two sides.

Poroshenko agreed to the ceasefire after Ukraine accused Russia of sending troops and arms onto its territory to bolster the separatists after they suffered heavy losses over the summer to a Ukrainian government offensive.

The peace roadmap agreed on Friday includes an exchange of prisoners of war and the establishment of a humanitarian corridor for refugees and aid. There was no sign of progress on either plan on Sunday.

(Additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome, Marcin Goclowski in Warsaw, Adrian Croft in Brussels, Arshad Mohammed in Washington, and Julien Ponthus in Paris; Writing by Gareth Jones; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Sonya Hepinstall, Hugh Lawson and Peter Cooney)