Istanbul: Nine Syrian refugees, including seven children, trying to reach Europe drowned on Sunday when their speedboat sank off Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, state media reported.

The boat hit trouble off the Demre district of Turkey’s Mediterranean Antalya province, a popular holiday spot, the Anadolu news agency said.

One woman, a man and seven children lost their lives in the sinking which took place in the early hours, it said. The oldest child was 14 and the youngest just three, it added.

Six people — all adults — were rescued.

The Dogan news agency said they were seeking to head illegally to Europe but their planned route was not immediately clear.

The nearest EU territory is the small Greek island of Kastellorizo to the west which lies off the Turkish resort of Kas.

Anadolu said a couple who survived — named as Idris Rashit and Zeynep Osman — lost five of their children in the disaster. State media published images of the pair hunched in grief.

Over a million people, many fleeing the war in Syria, crossed to European Union member Greece from Turkey in 2015 after the onset of the bloc’s worst migration crisis since the Second World War.

Turkey struck a deal with the EU in 2016 in an effort to stem the flow of migrants, and agreed to take back illegal migrants landing on Greek islands in exchange for incentives, including financial aid.

The deal, chastised by rights groups, sharply curbed the number of migrants seeking to cross the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas from Turkey to Greece.

However observers say that the numbers seeking to use this route have been ticking up again in recent months.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 10,948 people crossed to Greece this year up to May 30, sharply more than in the same period in 2017. Thirty-five people lost their lives using this route so far this year, the IOM says.

As well as migrants from countries such as Syria, Eritrea, Iraq and Afghanistan, the route has been used by Turkish citizens fleeing the crackdown that followed the 2016 failed coup.