On board the Ocean Viking (AFP)

After more than ten days of waiting, a European distribution agreement will allow the landing of the 356 people rescued aboard the Ocean Viking, much to the relief of SOS Mediterranean and MSF who were running out of food.

"All migrants aboard" the humanitarian boat of the two NGOs will be transferred to Maltese military boats, outside the territorial waters of this country, and then brought to shore, said in a tweet the Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

They will be divided between "France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal and Romania," said Muscat on his Twitter account, noting that "nobody will stay in Malta."

From Paris, Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced that France will welcome 150 of the 356 migrants, stressing that "France maintains its solidarity", three days after having decided to collect 40 migrants from the Spanish ship Open Arms.

"This is good news," said Ocean Viking Rescue Coordinator Nicholas Romaniuk, an AFP journalist who has been on board since the beginning of the mission.

"We are now awaiting official communication from the Maltese authorities," he added.

The news was not immediately announced to those concerned, as MSF prefers to finish a food distribution first.

- "Collective responsibility" -

Just before MSF told the AFP journalist that they had "only four days of food stocks counting on Friday".

The Ocean Viking, a 69-meter Norwegian-flagged vessel, also saved fuel, drifting by day in the Sicilian Canal.

The boat, which left for Marseille on 4 August and whose first mission was for SOS Méditerranée, was refused, at the last moment, by Malta to refuel on the go in water and fuel.

Mr Romaniuk stressed that the transfer operation should pose "no problem", explaining that it had already been "made the last time" with Aquarius, the previous ship of SOS Mediterranean, in September 2018.

"The weather is good, Malta has patrol speedboats but also bigger boats," he said.

EU Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos thanked Malta for demonstrating "concrete solidarity" by allowing the landing of migrants and welcomed the agreement reached between European states "in a spirit of collective responsibility".

It's been two weeks since some of the 356 people rescued by the Ocean Viking are on board.

Among them, there are four women and five children from one to six years, as well as a hundred minors under 18, of whom 80% travel alone, sometimes aged 13 or 15 years.

- Another ship, the MareJonio, has sailed -

Most of these people, two-thirds of whom come from Sudan, fled Libya to escape a wide range of ill-treatment, arbitrary detention and sometimes torture and arrived in poor health, often on the verge of malnutrition. according to the medical team.

The Ocean Viking was the last humanitarian ship still present in the Mediterranean to rescue migrants, until Thursday, when the MareJonio, operated by the left-wing Italian collective Mediterranea, sailed for Libya, according to a tweet from long.

On Friday, he was near Lampedusa, a Sicilian island halfway between Italy and Tunisia.

The MareJonio, which was put in receivership in May and released in August, under the anti-migrant law of the interior minister of the League (far right) Matteo Salvini, goes to the relief zone, ahead the Libyan coast.

The government of Salvini and the 5 Stars Movement fell on Tuesday with the resignation of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and is only forwarding current affairs, time for President Sergio Mattarella to eventually form a new executive.

Negotiations are under way between the M5S and the main leftist party, the Democratic Party (PD), which, among the conditions for an agreement, calls for the revocation of security measures (ban on landing and fines against humanitarian vessels laying migrants in Italy) adopted under Salvini.

© 2019 AFP