A migrant ship carrying around 100 people capsized in the frigid waters off Libya on Saturday and only four survivors had been rescued after hours of searching, aid groups said. Eight bodies were recovered but poor conditions were hampering the search taking place 30 miles (50 kilometers) off Libya's coast, Italy's ANSA news agency reported.

Flavio di Giacomo, Rome spokesman for the International Organization of Migration, said four people had been rescued out of an estimated 110 aboard. He said more details would become available after the four are brought to shore.

The vast majority of migrant ships set off from Libya's lawless coasts, where smugglers operate with impunity charging desperate migrants hundreds of dollars apiece to make the dangerous Mediterranean crossing.

Last year saw a record high number — 181,000 people — heading to Italy by sea, the EU rescue operation Frontex reported. West Africans, most of them hailing from Nigeria, accounted for most of the migrants in 2016, with a 10-fold increase in their numbers since 2010, Frontex reported.

The EUNAVFOR MED naval mission - also known as Operation Sophia - was launched in 2015 to tackle migration flows from northern Africa to Italy and to reduce the number of deaths in the Mediterranean Sea. Nine vessels currently take part in Operation Sophia, which has helped save the lives of close to 16,000 migrants in 2016, according to the EU.

Five years after Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi toppled by NATO intervention, the country has become the main jump-off point for migrants heading for Europe, and the breeding ground for militants as there has been no security, stability left in the war-torn country. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), there are more than 264,000 refugees and migrants currently in the war-torn country, according to 2016 reports. Libya, the oil-rich North African country descended into chaos after the Western intervention and parts of it have become a bastion for Daesh, giving the militants a new base even as its territory in Syria and Iraq shrinks under constant assault.