Eleven refugees, including six children – four of them babies – drowned on Sunday off the Greek island of Samos, coastguards said.

Ten of the dead were found in the cabin of their boat, which overturned as it made the hazardous crossing from the Turkish coast.

The other victim, a young girl, was washed up on the island. Dozens of refugees trying to reach Europe have died in the waters around the Greek islands in recent days.

Two other people were still missing, with coastguards saying 15 were plucked from the water after the boat capsized only 20 metres from the shore.

The sinking adds to a string of migrant boat tragedies since Monday off the Greek islands of Lesbos, Kalymnos and Rhodes in which more than 60 people have drowned, at least 28 of them children.

On Friday 22 people, including 17 children, lost their lives trying to cross to the eastern Aegean islands from Turkey, where more than 2 million Syrian refugees have fled to.

That followed another dark day on Wednesday when 24 migrants – 11 of them children – died in five shipwrecks off Lesbos, Samos and Agathonisi.

With the arrival of rough winter weather, and fears that Europe will soon close its doors to refugees, more than 80 people – most of them children – have drowned trying to reach Greece in October.

Since the beginning of the year, 580,125 migrants have landed on Greece’s shores, according to the UN’s refugee agency, with a total of 723,221 crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.