Mexico firework blasts lasted two hours

A series of explosions ripped through a Mexican fireworks market today, sending a huge column of smoke into the air and scaring residents but a large-scale tragedy was avoided.


The blasts, lasting for two hours, reduced the market in the town of Tultepec, west of the capital, to a charred ruin.


"It just got bigger and bigger, fireworks, fireworks," sobbed a man on the scene, interviewed on the radio while searching for two missing brothers.


Civil protection workers said around 100 people fought sporadic fires.


People scrambled to move wreckage amid hundreds of stalls burned to the ground and the charred wrecks of cars.


A radio reporter described people fleeing the scene with burns. Exploding fireworks could be heard in the background.


The blasts came celebrations began for the September 15 independence day, when Mexicans fire often poorly-made fireworks into the air.


Village fiestas and national holidays in Mexico rarely go by without the sound of rockets and bangers going off.


Fireworks are sold by the tens of thousands in mid-September, many in informal markets not controlled by authorities.


Twenty-eight people died after a blast at a street market selling fireworks in the coastal city of Veracruz on New Year's Eve, 2002.


- REUTERS