Some lawyers at the Omagh inquest have been accused of trying to "impugn the conduct of police officers" dealing with the bombing.
In the first two days of evidence, officers were repeatedly asked about procedures for dealing with bomb alerts, and questioned at length about their passing on of bomb warnings. Yesterday the lawyer acting for the RUC Chief Constable said he had been directed to make an application to the coroner to rule on the scope of the inquest.
Mr Stephen Ritchie said he was doing so because of the "turn of events" in the first two days of the hearing and the line of questioning from two lawyers representing families of the dead.
Mr Ritchie said the actions of Mr Michael Mansfield QC, and Omagh solicitor Mr Barry Fox - representing different sets of relatives - showed the lines they were taking.
"One of the lines is to impugn the conduct of police officers dealing with this emergency," he said.
He said the application was to ask the coroner "to make a ruling on what is the precise scope of this inquest and what issues are properly to be investigated by this inquest". Mr Ritchie pointed to a legal definition cited by the coroner on the opening day of the hearing. By this definition, an inquest was to find "by what means", as opposed to by "what broad circumstances" deaths occurred, Mr Ritchie said.
Mr Leckey said he would not make a general ruling on the matter and stood by his opening statement.
He said he would rule on any questions that might arise in coming days but not on those that had already passed.
Photographic evidence continued, with pictures of parts of the car bomb being displayed first. One of these showed a battery connector, believed to have been part of the detonating device which had set the bomb off. A series of photographs of corpses wrapped in sheets awaiting transport to the makeshift mortuary in the leisure centre were also shown.
In three of the photos, around a dozen bodies were laid out in a nearby alleyway. In another, five lay on the floor of Moira's boutique on Market Street, surrounded by rails of clothing.
Relatives of those killed had been warned beforehand about the content of the pictures and the majority had left the court either to avoid seeing the images or to watch them together in the privacy of the family room.
The inquest was played a tape of the police radio network in Omagh from the time of the first warning being transmitted to officers on patrol until just after the explosion. The inquest heard the control room officer inform others that there had been a bomb warning about 150 yards from the courthouse.
"If you want even to park in Bridge Street and take a wander up for cars that seem to be heavily laden," he suggested.
During the next 20 minutes of static and radio patter officers could be heard calmly giving and receiving reports and instructions. At the time of the explosion, most of their efforts were being devoted towards the courthouse, at the far end of the town centre from the blast.
On the tape a distant rumbling hiss could be heard, followed by silence, then a voice yelling "this has exploded", and then a call from a sergeant. "Oscar, need assistance at the bottom of the town."
The inquest was shown maps positioning RUC officers at the time of the blast and the position of the dead at the same time. Some relatives in the hall could be seen pointing up at the screen showing where their family members had been.