A KEY investigator of the TWA Flight 800 crash said yesterday that no chemical evidence has been found indicating that a bomb caused the explosion on July 17th.
Asked if there was any evidence that would indicate a bomb, the vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Mr Robert Francis, said "No."
Investigators suggested on Sunday that they could obtain by today vital evidence of what caused the Paris bound flight to crash into the waters off Long Island, New York, killing all 230 people aboard.
Meanwhile, relatives of those who died in the crash again expressed anger at the slow retrieval of the bodies from the ocean floor.
"Today, at this point, we still have 71 of our loved ones missing," said Mr Joe Lychner, who lost his wife and two young daughters.
"Within the next 48 hours, we'll get something that we think will give us the clues that we need," the assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mr James Kallstrom, said yesterday.
The FBI has said the crash might have been caused by a bomb, a missile or a mechanical mishap. But Mr Kallstrom declined to say in which direction investigators were leaning.
The New York Times, quoting unnamed federal officials, reported yesterday that investigators would not be able to conclude definitively that a bomb caused the explosion until they found a piece of the fuselage that contains chemicals consistent with an explosive.