Some 170 African migrants on board a boat have gone missing at sea off the Libyan capital Tripoli, a coastguard official says.

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

Ibrahim added that the officials founded “the remains” of the boat, “which had some 200 migrants on board,” and “managed to save 16 people and recovered 15 bodies but the search continues for some 170 people who disappeared at sea."

Political unrest and instability in Libya have reportedly turned it into a launch pad for African migrants seeking a better life in Europe.

However, the migrants’ living condition in European countries is not desirable. In recent years, this has led to numerous demonstrations by migrant workers in European capitals to protest against their hardships.

Meanwhile, a recent report by Amnesty International stressed how the European Union and its member states have constructed an increasingly impenetrable fortress to keep the migrants out, regardless of the desperate measures that many of them are prepared to take to reach Europe.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has called on governments to provide legal alternatives so that “people in need of refuge can seek and find protection.”

The UNHCR says 500 migrants and refugee seekers have died in the Mediterranean Sea since the beginning of the year.

Over 23,000 people are estimated to have lost their lives trying to reach the Old Continent since 2000.