We show that the integrability obstruction of a transitive Lie algebroid coincides with the lifting obstruction of a crossed module of groupoids associated naturally with the given algebroid. Then we extend this result to general extensions of integrable transitive Lie algebroids by Lie algebra bundles. Such a lifting obstruction is directly related with the classification of extensions of transitive Lie groupoids. We also give a classification of such extensions which differentiates to the classification of transitive Lie algebroids discussed in \cite{KCHM:new}.