A SENIOR US administration official said yesterday that evidence in the crash of TWA Flight 800 on July 17th was pointing away from mechanical failure as the cause.
The White House Chief of Staff, Mr Leon Panetta, told ABC television network that of three possible causes of the crash, "one was (the) possibility of a malfunction and obviously the evidence is beginning to move away from that possibility".
However, he added that mechanical malfunction has not been ruled out in the crash off Long Island, in which all 230 people on board were killed.
Investigators said they hoped to have more clues within 48 hours to solve the mystery of whether a bomb, missile or mechanical malfunction blew the plane apart in midair.
Mr James Kallstrom, the senior FBI investigator on the scene, said no cause was being ruled out yet.
"All the three theories that we've talked about are still up on the board, because we have reason to have them up there. Whether one is less likely or more likely, I'm not going to comment on that.
Asked at an afternoon news conference when investigators might have enough evidence to draw conclusions about the crash's cause, he said. "I think within the next 48 hours . . . we'll get something that we think that will give us the clues that we need."
Investigators at the news conference announced the pre dawn discovery of an approximately 50 foot (15 metre) piece of the plane's fuselage, where they hoped to find more victims.
"The weather was good out there, the diving continues and remote vehicle analysis and search continues," a spokesman said, adding that divers had recovered a new large piece of "centre to rear fuselage" in the wreckage field about 17 metres long.
Investigators said they had located a third engine but had not found the fourth yet.
The National Transportation Safety Board said divers had recovered 153 bodies so far. The recovery of victims has been given the highest priority by the underwater search teams.
It also said underwater video examination of two of the jet's engines had not shown anything unusual.
The FBI said yesterday that the crash of TWA Flight 800 and Saturday's bomb blast in Atlanta, appeared to be unrelated.
"My first reaction is that I don't see any connection," Mr James Kallstrom, assistant director of the FBI's New York office, told a late afternoon briefing. "But we've yet to really look at that."
A spokesman said earlier that investigators were looking at the significance of the position of the debris, which indicates the front end of the plane broke off first.
"I guess it's fair to say that things that come off first tend to be an indicator of what happened," he added.
News reports have speculated that an explosion in the front cargo hold caused the front end of the plane to break off first.