The Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — An explosion Tuesday in an area packed with small fireworks factories in central Mexico left four people dead and a man with severe burns, officials said.
Enrique Quiroz, a spokesman for Civil Defense in Mexico State, said authorities did not know how the explosion started in Capulhuac, located 20 miles west of Mexico City.
Poor safety conditions have led to many fireworks explosions in recent years.
On New Year’s Eve 2002, a spark set off boxes of fireworks in the Gulf port city of Veracruz, killing 28 people and consuming a city block. An explosion of illegally stored fireworks in 1999 killed 63 people, injured hundreds and leveled part of downtown Celaya in west-central Mexico. At least 68 people were killed in 1988 in a fireworks explosion in a sprawling Mexico City market.