CAIRO — Human remains retrieved from the crash site of EgyptAir Flight 804 suggest there was an explosion on board that may have brought down the aircraft in the east Mediterranean, a senior Egyptian forensics official said on Tuesday.

"The logical explanation is that an explosion brought it down," the official told The Associated Press.

The official, who is part of the Egyptian team investigating the crash that killed all 66 people on board the flight from Paris to Cairo early last Thursday, has personally examined the remains at a Cairo morgue. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

All 80 pieces that have been brought to Cairo so far are small. "There isn't even a whole body part, like an arm or a head," the official said, adding that one piece was the left part of a head.

"But I cannot say what caused the blast," he said. He did not say whether traces of explosives were found on the human remains retrieved so far.

The expert's comments mark a new dramatic twist surrounding last week's crash, which remains a mystery. The plane's black boxes have yet to be found, and photographs of retrieved debris published by the Egyptian military over the weekend were not charred and appear to show no signs of fire.

Egyptian officials have said they believe terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure or some other catastrophic event, and some aviation experts have said the erratic flight reported by the Greek defense minister suggests a bomb blast or a struggle in the cockpit.

But so far no hard evidence has emerged on the cause of the disaster.

An independent Cairo daily, al-Watan, quoted an unnamed forensics official in its Tuesday edition as saying that the plane blew up in midair — but also that it had yet to be determined whether the blast was caused by the an explosive device or something else. The official further said the remains retrieved so far were "no larger than the size of a hand."

France's aviation accident investigation agency would not comment on anything involving the bodies or say whether any information had surfaced in the investigation to indicate an explosion.

In a search for clues, family members of the victims have been arriving during the day Tuesday at the Cairo morgue forensics' department to give DNA samples to help identify the remains of their kin, a security official said. The official also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Also, a technical team from Egypt's forensic medicine department went to a hotel near the Cairo International Airport where relatives of the victims are gathered to take DNA samples to use in identifying the bodies.

The EgyptAir crash shocked a nation struggling to revive its ailing economy and contain a resilient insurgency by Islamic militants.

Safety onboard Egyptian aircraft and at the country's airports has been under close international scrutiny since a Russian airliner crashed in the Sinai Peninsula last October, killing all 224 people on board, shortly after taking off from an Egyptian resort. The crash, claimed by the Islamic State affiliate in Sinai and blamed by Moscow on an explosive device planted on board, decimated Egypt's lucrative tourism industry, which had already been battered by years of turmoil in the country.