Mexico pledges fireworks market rebuild
Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto has vowed to help rebuild a fireworks market where explosions killed at least 35 people and reopen it next year, while a Roman Catholic church has held funeral masses throughout the day.
Families packed the Our Lady of Loreto Catholic Church in Tultepec in Mexico State on Thursday for funeral services for those that died when chain-reaction blasts destroyed the country's best-known fireworks market on Tuesday.
Investigators have still not announced the cause of the tragedy, the third explosion at the market since 2005, which has cast a pall over Mexico's Christmas season.
Pena Nieto has visited the injured in hospital and later spoke at an anniversary ceremony for one of Mexico's independence heroes about the future of the San Pablito fireworks market.
"We commit to support all of the artisans, the 300 vendors from this market, to recover or to support them so that they can restart their normal activities next year and we can achieve the reconstruction of that market," Pena Nieto said.
Vendors say they know the dangers of the fireworks market but say it's their only way to make a living and would be returning to work there.
Safety measures that were put in place after the previous two explosions were apparently ignored.
Investigators are now focusing their attention on reports that vendors displayed fireworks outside their concrete stalls in the passageways that were designed as safety buffers to prevent this type of chain-reaction explosions.
Refugio Leon, whose family ran seven stalls in the market, said vendors commonly stacked displays of bottle rockets and firecrackers outside their establishments in the passageways in violation of the rules.
As it's the holiday season, the market was packed with fireworks and bustling with hundreds of shoppers when the blasts levelled the market with dramatic video showing a towering plume of smoke that was lit up by a staccato of bangs and flashes of light.
