Mexico City (CNN) -- Rescuers early Friday morning recovered a seventh body from inside a coal mine in northern Mexico, the country's labor secretary said.
Javier Lozano has said that at this point -- more than three days after an explosion -- there is no hope of finding alive the remaining miners trapped inside.
Seven other bodies remain inside the shaft.
A group of five experts from Chile arrived at the mine site just outside of Sabinas, Mexico, to aid Mexican authorities, though a heroic rescue like that of the 33 miners trapped in Chile last year was virtually impossible.
As rescuers continued to clear debris inside the mine, residents of a nearby town on Thursday held a funeral for one of the victims, the state-run Notimex news agency reported.
The mine had been operating for only 20 days and had 25 workers who were not unionized, Lozano said.
He described such small, makeshift coal mines as "unsafe places," calling them "irregular, deadly traps, as we are seeing."
The owner of the mine is a company known as Binsa, the statement from the attorney general's office said.
The mine contains a shaft that is 60 meters (197 feet) deep, Sabinas Mayor Jesus Montemayor Garza said.
Sabinas is in the coal production center of Mexico and has a museum dedicated to the history of coal mining.
Several chapters of that history, however, have been tragic.
In 2006, in the nearby town of San Juan de Sabinas, 65 miners perished after an explosion in the mine where they were working. Explosive gas inside the mine hindered the rescue of the miners at the Pasta de Conchos mine, which the government eventually abandoned.
An organization representing family members of the victims of that accident said Tuesday's blast was a tragic reminder that the federal government must do more to regulate mines. One activist from the organization said there had been more than 40 people killed in local coal mines since the 2006 accident.
"How long will it take to recognize that there is a very serious crisis in coal mining (in the Mexican state of) Coahuila, in which the workers and their families are those who must endure the worst, with dead, widows and orphans?" a statement from the organization said. CNN
