Icelandic Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson expressed condolences Friday to the families and friends of the people on board the Malaysia airliner that crashed over eastern Ukraine.

Saying that it was horrendous that a passenger plane had been shot down with advanced anti-aircraft weapons, Sveinsson expressed his strong condemnation of these actions in a statement published in the ministry's website.

He said it is urgent for an objective international investigation to be initiated immediately into the causes of the crash.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, a Boeing 777, was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it went down Thursday in eastern Ukraine with 298 passengers and crew aboard. There were no survivors.

On Thursday, Kiev and militants in eastern Ukraine traded accusations over the crash. A rebel leader said Ukrainian forces shot the airliner down, but Poroshenko said the country's armed forces did not fire at any flying object in the region where the plane went down.