According to the Associated Press and UPI, labour secretary Javier Lozano said the body had been removed but did not identify the worker. There is little chance that anyone survived, he added.
Tuesday’s explosion trapped 14 workers at the small mine owned by Binsa located in San Juan de Sabinas in the state of Coahuila near the Texas border. It had been open for business just 20 days.
Mexican officials, a CNN report said Thursday, contacted Chilean experts to assist in the recovery, and those helping at Coahuila include at least two who “participated actively” in last year’s rescue of 33 workers after 29 days underground.
The first five miners’ bodies were located Tuesday night and Wednesday; three of them were found near the front face of the mine.
According to the AP and CNN, the explosion – caused by an inundation of gas – was so strong at the vertical-shaft mine that a 15-year-old boy working on a conveyor belt outside the pit was seriously injured in the blast.
He was transported to a hospital, where both of his arms were amputated.
It was that event, Javier Lozano told the news service Wednesday, which left him with little faith that anyone inside would have survived.
"The outlook is very bad," he said.
"The truth is that it does not allow us to hold out much hope."
He also identified via Twitter the first five killed in the blast, CNN reported, as
miners Julio Cesar Resendiz Dominguez, Mario Alberto Anguiano Montes, Leobardo Sanchez Santos, Isaias Valero Perez and Juan Carlos Escobedo Chavez.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in a public statement late Tuesday that the country’s government "will do everything in its power to help state and local authorities rescue the rest of the trapped miners."
A Binsa spokesperson told UPI that the mine where 25 non-unionized miners worked, was in compliance with safety regulations, and denied operating in an unsafe manner.
“It is one of the companies with the best safety,” spokesperson Jesus Espinosa said, noting that both government and union officials had reviewed operations.
Sabinas is in the heart of Mexico’s coal-producing region. The mine is one of many small operations supported in part by the Mexican state and produces coal for power generation.
The country’s worst-ever mining accident occurred in 2006, when 65 workers died in an explosion at Grupo Mexico's Pasta de Conchos coal mine.
Victims’ families are still pushing for efforts to recover 63 bodies still encased in the operation.
