An 18-year-old Ukrainian woman who prosecutors say was gang-raped, half-strangled and then set on fire in an attack that sparked street protests in a provincial Ukrainian town, has died, a hospital official said.

Hundreds took to the streets this month after police released two of Oksana Makar's three suspected attackers whose parents had political connections, reigniting a public debate on corruption in the former Soviet republic.

The two men were rearrested and police were disciplined after the intervention of President Viktor Yanukovich who sent an investigating team to the town of Mykolayiv in southern Ukraine.

All three young men have been charged with rape and one of them with attempted murder.