Only 17 survivors have been found of the roughly 200 Africans who set out to Europe by boat, after the boat sank 35 miles off the coast of Libya Saturday.

The Navy told Reuters 16 bodies have been found, and a search is under way for the remainder of the migrants, who are feared drowned.

A coastguard spokesman told AFP remains of the wooden boat were found, which was carrying Somalis, Eritreans, and those of other nationalities, according to The Independent.

"We are looking for 170 African passengers on a wooden boat that has foundered off the Guarabouli area" some 60 kilometres (35 miles) east of Tripoli, coastguard official Abdellatif Mohammed Ibrahim told AFP.

But the coastguard spokesman also said there was only one patrol boat available to conduct the search.

AFP reported that there was a body of a child found, who was wearing a life jacket.

Recently, the attempt to reach Europe by water has been increasingly reported.

A group of 75 Africans were adrift at sea and had to be rescued after attempting to reach Italy in an inflatable raft, AFP reported.

"Libya is highly unstable as it is now, and that means that the people-smuggling networks are flourishing," a European Union border agency spokeswoman Izabella Cooper told AFP.

Another boat had capsized in July, when 20 drowned out of a reported 150.

Then earlier in August, Tunisian coastguards found 90 Africans in a makeshift boat headed from Libya to Lampedusa -- an Italian island -- when the boat broke down off of Zarzis.

On Aug. 12, Frontex said boat migrants arriving in Italy increased by 500 percent in the first half of the year, setting a new record since the Arab Spring of 2011, AFP reported.

All of the 16 rescued Saturday were released, since there was nowhere to detain them, Reuters reported.