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ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia on Tuesday asked citizens to “avoid irregular routes,” two days after a boat carrying mostly Ethiopian migrants sank off Yemen, killing at least 76 and leaving dozens missing.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said 157 people were on board when the vessel sank on Sunday in the Gulf of Aden.
It was headed for the Abyan governorate in southern Yemen, a popular destination for boats smuggling Africans hoping to reach wealthy Gulf states.
“Ethiopia mourns the tragic loss of 60+ (plus) citizens in a maritime disaster off Yemen’s coast,” Ethiopia’s permanent mission in Geneva wrote on X adding that authorities in Addis Ababa are “working with partners to investigate and urges citizens to avoid irregular routes.”
Thousands of Africans travel from Djibouti to Yemen across the Red Sea, hoping to reach oil-rich Gulf states to work as laborers or domestic workers.
Many are from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, which was ravaged by war between 2020 and 2022.
The Red Sea migrant route is one of the world’s most dangerous, according to IOM, which documented at least 558 deaths last year.
In March, at least 180 people were reported missing off the Yemeni coast, the vast majority of them Ethiopians.

CESME:Ali Alyanak and his neighbors in Turkiye’s tourist hub Izmir now have to draw water from a shrinking aquifer 170 meters underground even as hotel pools remain full — a sign for many of the region’s dire water crisis amid prolonged drought.
“Our parents used to draw water from a depth of eight to nine meters, but now we have to go down to 170 meters (560 feet),” said Alyanak, the 39-year-old village chief in Germiyan.
To cope, authorities in nearby Cesme, a popular seaside resort in Izmir province on Turkiye’s western coast, are restricting drinking water access to 10 hours a day.
The city of Izmir itself, Turkiye’s third largest, will cut that access to just six hours starting Wednesday.
Desolate images from the large nearby dam that supplies Cesme, widely broadcast on television, illustrated the risks for the region: its water level has plunged to three percent of capacity, leaving behind a barren landscape.
For Alyanak and many others, the culprit is clear.
“Hotels are the main problem: The water in the pools evaporates, towels are washed daily and people take three to five showers a day, as soon as they go swimming or come back from outside,” Alyanak fumed.
“It’s a waste.”
Climatologists say the Mediterranean basin — which concentrates 30 percent of world tourism — will see a sharp decline in rainfall over the coming decades, raising fears of more frequent and severe droughts as a result of global warming.


The almost complete absence of rainfall since autumn is largely responsible for the current crisis, with some scientists calculating that 88 percent of Turkiye’s territory is at risk of desertification.
Last week, mosque loudspeakers across Turkiye issued prayers for rain.
But experts also highlight the impact of tens of thousands of visitors, which is putting pressure on tourism hotspots throughout the Mediterranean.
Selma Akdogan of the Izmir Chamber of Environmental Engineers said tourists consumed “two to three times” more water than locals.
This at a time when “water levels are falling not only in summer but also in winter,” she said, noting that “Rainfall is less regular but more intense, making it more difficult for the soil to absorb rainwater.”
She wants local authorities to have hotels fill their swimming pools with seawater, for example, and for locals to give up lawns and grass in favor of less water-intensive yards.


At the helm of a luxury 253-room establishment overlooking the turquoise waters of the Aegean sea, Orhan Belge has little patience for the media focus on the issue.
“Big four- or five-star hotels like ours have water tanks of 200-250 tons. We have water 24 hours a day,” said Belge, who is also president of the city’s hoteliers’ union.
For him, the solution to water shortages lies mainly in desalination, a costly and energy-intensive process already used by some hotels in the region.
The manager of a small hotel in the city, who asked to remain anonymous, acknowledged that “water shortages are a real problem,” but said he was primarily worried that use restrictions would prompt tourists to look elsewhere.
“Last summer, we were fully booked during the same period. And we were still full two weeks ago,” he said.
“Now, the hotel is 80 percent empty and we have no reservations for August.”
Sabiha Yurtsever, an 80-year-old retiree who has spent every summer in Cesme for the past 25 years, said she could not remember a summer so dry.
She blamed both the government and hoteliers for making the region unliveable.
“When forests burn, they build hotels instead of replanting,” said Yurtsever, who spends the rest of the year in Izmir.
“The fewer trees you have, the less rain you will get.”