Student protests in southern Ethiopia has seen the deaths of at least nine people this week, with 70 others injured, the government said in a statement late Thursday.
While the police was accused by the opposition of forcing brutality, the government blamed "anti-peace" forces for inciting violence and initiating grenade attacks, Agence France-Presse reported.
Mass demonstrations caused "loss of lives and property" in several university towns in Oromia, Ethiopia's largest region, according to a statement on the state news agency.
The riots, which began Wednesday after "students confused by deliberately misleading rumors and gossips created havoc," had been brought under control, it added.
According to AFP, five people were killed in Ambo, about 80 miles south of Addis Ababa, and another three people killed near Bidire, about 260 miles from the capital, the statement read, without providing details on the cause of their deaths.
A hand grenade killed one person and injured 70 in Alem Maya, 230 miles east of Addis Ababa.
Government proposals were being protested to extend its administrative control to several towns in Oromia, prompting fears of land grabs, according to local media reports.
"The students... tried to show their grievances by submitting their questions to the local government but the answer they got was beatings, killing, harassment and coercion," Bekele Nega, secretary of the Oromia Federal Congress party, told AFP.
"These people not only will lose their land, they are also going to lose their culture, their language, their identity, their representation in parliament."
However, the protest leaders were accused by the government of trying to destabilize the country, AFP reported.
"The forces behind the chaos... have a past violent history," the government statement read, claiming the protests had been encouraged by "media inside and outside the country" for "their evil purpose", without giving further details.
With nearly 27 million people, Oromia is the most populated of the country's federal states and has its own language, Oromo, distinct from Ethiopia's official Amharic language.
