A GERMAN aid ship carrying more than 200 migrants is heading for Malta after Italy agreed to take in some of the passengers.

The announcement has ended Europe’s second impasse this month over people rescued off Libya’s coast by humanitarian groups.

Italian premier Giuseppe Conte said after a phone call with the Maltese prime minister that the boat, operated by Mission Lifeline, would disembark in Malta and its legal standing would be investigated.

Conte said: “Italy will do its part to accept a quota of migrants aboard the Lifeline, with the hope that also other European countries would do the same, as some have previously indicated.”

The Lifeline has been blocked in the Mediterranean Sea since last week, when both Italy and Malta refused to grant it access to their ports.

The impasse was similar to another this month over the Aquarius, a rescue ship operated by French aid groups.

The ship carrying 630 migrants had its journey to land extended by a week after Malta and Italy would not grant docking rights. Spain ultimately agreed to accept the passengers, and the Aquarius travelled an additional 900 miles to get there.

Italy’s Sky TG24, which visited the Lifeline on Monday, said it was about four times over passenger capacity and running low on fuel. According to Sky, it had on board 224 migrants, including eight children, and 10 crew members.

Italy’s new hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has made clear he does not want rescue ships run by non-governmental agencies to ferry migrants to Italy again.

Conte is pressing European peers to share more responsibility when they meet at a summit later this week.

In a tweet about the Lifeline, Salvini said the “illegal ship will finally be seized” when it arrives in Malta, adding: “For women and children truly fleeing war, the ports are open, for all the others, no.”

Salvini has likened the ships run by private aid groups under non-Italian flags to taxi services that are serving migrant smugglers.

Italy has not taken the same position with other ships. It allowed the Danish-flagged container ship Alexander Maersk to dock and disembark 108 migrants in Sicily on Tuesday after days at sea.

Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat earlier pressed other EU nations to take on a share of the migrants. He also said that Malta intended to investigate the actions of the ship’s captain, who ignored instructions from Italian authorities coordinating the rescue.

Authorities have also questioned the legality of the ship, which has a Dutch flag but is run by a German group.

In his proposals for dealing with migration, Conte has emphasised that migrants arriving in Italy are arriving in Europe, and responsibility for them should be shared by all the member states.

“The obligation of rescue cannot become an obligation to process all the requests on behalf of everyone,” the proposal reads.

Conte also asserts that only 7% of migrants arriving in Europe qualify as refugees.

Meanwhile, Austria has conducted a high-profile training exercise to show how it could deal with an influx of migrants along its frontier with Slovenia.

Hundreds of police and soldiers staged a dry run yesterday near Spielfeld, which is situated 110 miles south of Vienna.

The town was a major crossing point for migrants in the summer and autumn of 2015.

However, in recent months hardly any migrants have been arrived in Spielfeld.

The training exercise has come amid fears of a domino effect if Germany closes its borders.

German chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from conservative allies in Bavaria to turn migrants back at the border, a move that some political commentators believe could prompt others to do the same.