BEIJING, March 21 -- Chinese icebreaker Xue Long, or "Snow Dragon," set out Friday to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370, while Malaysian officials said that they were awaiting information from Australia whether the objects shown in satellite images are related to the missing flight.

Xue Long's Lead Science Officer Liu Shunlin told Xinhua that the ship would arrive within three to four days in the remote area of the southern Indian Ocean where the suspected objects were spotted, after taking on enough resources to stay at sea for three weeks.

China's oceanic administration on Friday set up a working group to manage Xue Long's search for the missing MH370 in the area more than 1,000 nautical miles from Fremantle, Australia, from where the icebreaker set out.

Meanwhile, three Chinese cargo planes arrived in Malaysia on Friday morning and would search areas in the southern corridor.

Malaysian officials said in Kuala Lumpur on Friday that Malaysia is awaiting information from Australia on the suspicious debris, while the search and rescue operations in the rest of the southern and northern corridors are under way.

Malaysian Defense Minister and Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told a press conference that the Australian authorities were intensifying the search for the suspicious debris of the jet, while China had deployed five ships and three ship-borne helicopters to the southern corridor.

Hishammuddin said the Kazakh authorities had assured Malaysia that no trace of the missing plane had been found over its territory.

It was revealed that the captain of the missing jet made a phone call just minutes before take-off inside the cockpit. The call was being investigated, said Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, CEO of Malaysia Airlines.

In another development, Ukraine police have confirmed that background checks on the Ukrainian passenger have come back clear, Hishammuddin added.

He said that though the black box's signal can last only 30 days because of the battery, they will use other technologies to locate it. The black box of the Air France Flight 447 which crashed on June 1, 2009 had not been found until almost two years later, he added.

The missing Malaysian airplane is unlikely to have been shot down, said a Malaysian military official Friday in Beijing.

Lt. Gen. Dato'Sri Ackbal bin Haji Abdul Samad, air operations commander of the Malaysian Royal Air Force, made the remarks at a briefing for relatives of Chinese passengers on board MH370.

Asked if it was possible that the plane had been shot down by air forces, Samad said it was "highly not possible," adding that while military radar had captured signs of the jet, they did not take any measure as they believed the aircraft was "friendly."

A Malaysian team arrived in Beijing late Thursday to deal with issues related to the missing plane and met relatives on Friday.

The search on Friday for objects possibly related to the plane has changed from radar detection to visual sightings, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said.

"Noting that we've got no radar detections yesterday, we have re-planned the search to be visual, so aircraft flying relatively low with very highly skilled and trained observers looking out of the aircraft windows and looking to see objects," AMSA Emergency Response Division General Manager John Young said in a pre-recorded video on Friday.

AMSA tasked five aircraft for Friday's search. There were three Royal Australian Air Force P-3 Orion aircraft, a Bombardier Global Express long-range corporate jet as a visual search aircraft with State Emergency Service observers aboard, and a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon.

The five aircraft returned empty-handed from a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean.

China is in close communication with Australia on the search for the missing MH370 plane, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Friday.

He told a daily press briefing that China has sent several vessels to the area where possible debris was spotted and got support and cooperation from the Australian side.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Friday that the country is still conducting search operations for the missing plane within its territory although satellite had sighted suspicious debris in the southern Indian Ocean.

"Even though Australia has sighted suspicious objects in the Indian Ocean, we have not abandoned our search operations in Cambodia," the prime minister said.

He also ordered local authorities in all provinces to search in any suspicious areas.

Hun Sen said Cambodia will welcome Chinese and Malaysian experts if they are willing to come to Cambodia for further search operations.

On Tuesday, the Cambodian Defense Ministry sent four Z-9 utility helicopters and two naval vessels to search for the missing jet at sea and on land within the country's territory.