A series of blasts ripped through a fireworks market outside Mexico City on Tuesday, killing at least 29 people and injuring more than 70 others.

Video footage shows the explosions going off one after the other in the open air market as a column of black smoke blotted out the blue sky.  Beneath that shroud were the decimated tents and stalls, and around a hundred people who didn't get away in time.  

"All of a sudden it started booming," said eyewitness Crescencia Francisco Garcia .  "I and the others surrounding me all took off running."

Fireworks are a common part of Mexican Christmas celebrations, and thus the market was crowded with families stocking up for the holiday.  The injured included three children who suffered burns over 70 percent of their bodies. 

The San Pablito Market in Tultepec, about kilometers north of Mexico City, is the largest fireworks market in Mexico accounting for 80 percent of the nation's retail sales.  In a new release from August - the beginning of the heaviest season of fireworks sales - the director of the Mexican Pyrotechnics Institute Juan Ignacio Rodarte Cordero called San Pablito "the safest pyrotechnics market in all of Latin America", with vending stalls which were "designed perfectly and with sufficient space" so that a single spark wouldn't ignite a chain of fires.