ADDIS ABABA, July 29 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian government on Monday restored internet connection in the restive southern city of Hawassa after a 10 days outage.

The Ethiopian government is yet to give a statement on the internet outage, but the outage started on July 18, soon after reports came of violent clashes between ethnic Sidama youths and security forces in Hawassa city, 275 km southeast of Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.

The ethnic Sidama youths were agitating for the creation of their own regional state, separate from the Southern regional state.

The clashes left at least four people dead, with security forces arresting at least 150 individuals suspected of involvement in the violent clashes.

Speaking to Xinhua, a resident of Hawassa city said mobile and WIFI internet connection has been restored in Hawassa city since Monday morning.

"I have been able to use mobile and WIFI internet connection since Monday morning. I have also confirmed internet connection has been restored in neighboring localities surrounding Hawassa," he told Xinhua.

Hawassa city is home to Ethiopia's flagship Hawassa Industrial Park, built by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) in a record time of nine months and commissioned back in July 2016.

Ethnic Sidamas make up around 4 percent of Ethiopia's estimated 105 million population. In recent years, Sidama activists have campaigned for Sidama zone to break out of Ethiopia's Southern regional state and form Ethiopia's 10th regional state.

Ethiopia currently has nine regional states, although over the last year several ethnic groups in the country have been campaigning to create their own regional states, heightening fears of political instability in the country. Enditem

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