Ankara/Polikastro, Greece: The Turkish coastguard on Tuesday recovered the bodies of nine refugees including two babies after their boat sank off the west coast while trying to reach Europe.

The coastguard said it discovered the boat just 25 metres from the coastline after it set off from the town of Seferihisar in Izmir province in an apparent bid to reach Greece.

The search was continuing in the Aegean, the coastguard said in a statement, adding that two survivors had been rescued.

The deaths come after 37 refugees drowned off another part of the Turkish coast on Saturday — in harrowing scenes reminiscent of the death of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose tiny body was found lying face down on a Turkish beach in September.

Turkey reached an agreement with the European Union in November to stem the flow of refugeesbound for Europe in return for €3 billion (Dh12 billion) in financial assistance.

But the agreement has failed to check the tide of arrivals, many of them refugees from Syria fleeing the conflict in their homeland.

Neither the deal with the EU nor harsh winter conditions have appeared to deter refugeestrying to reach Europe, many of whom pay people smugglers thousands of dollars for the risky crossing.

The government said on Monday it was working on new legal measures to strengthen penalties for human smuggling by making it an “act of terror and organised crime”.

Meanwhile, at least 80 buses packed with refugees, many of them women and children, were backed up short of the Greek border with Macedonia on Tuesday, stranded by protests on either side of the frontier.

Taxi-drivers on the Macedonian side have blocked the railway line between the two countries, protesting over the fact that police give priority first to trains and buses to take the refugeesnorth to Serbia en route to western Europe.

On the Greek side, farmers had parked dozens of tractors on the roadside leading to the border crossing at Idomeni, part of a protest over a planned pension reform by the Greek government to satisfy international creditors.

At least 80 buses stood on the Greek side. A camp at the frontier was at full capacity with some 700 people.

“We’ve been here for a few days now,” said a Macedonian taxi-driver, who gave his name as Goran. “The railway is blocked, the aim is to get the authorities to talk to us about an agreement that will allow us to transport refugees to Tabanovce,” on Macedonia’s northern border with Serbia.

More than 62,000 refugee’s, many of them refugees from the Syrian war, arrived in Greece last month by boat and dinghy from Turkey braving winter weather and rough seas, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

“[It] is many, many times what we saw a year ago in the previous January,” IOM spokesman Joel Millman said in Geneva.

He added that there were more than 360 deaths among refugeesin the waters off Greece, Turkey and Italy during the month.

More than 360 refugeesdied in the waters off Greece, Turkey and Italy during the month. In the latest fatal crossing, nine people, including two babies, were found drowned off the coast of western Turkey on Tuesday.

More than 1 million people fleeing poverty, war and repression in the Middle East, Asia and Africa reached Europe’s shores last year, most heading for Germany.

Temperatures in the Balkans, having dropped below freezing in January, were back up into the teens, easing the journey for a growing proportion of women and children.

“From one in 10 who were children, now we are looking at a significant proportion of women and children, up to 60 per cent,” Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the US children’s fund Unicef, told a news briefing in Geneva.

Aid agencies and authorities erected tents along the route to the border, but many male refugeesslept outside on the ground, lighting camp fires against the morning chill.

“It’s not possible to get all these people into tents,” said a refugee who gave his name as Sardar and said he was from Iraq.

“There aren’t enough facilities so we spent the night on the ground.” A police official in Macedonia, who declined to be named, told Reuters: “We’re working on the problem. We hope it will be resolved soon.”