国内英语新闻:Fireworks sales down in Beijing during holiday

BEIJING, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- Sales of fireworks and the number of people injured due to fireworks setting off in Beijing have dropped significantly during this year's Spring Festival holiday, which began on Feb. 10.

A total of 313,000 cartons of fireworks had been sold from Feb. 9, the Lunar New Year's Eve, to Feb. 14 in the capital city, down 45 percent from the 564,000 cartons sold during the same period last year, according to the statistics from the Beijing municipal government on Friday.

A total of 165 people were injured due to fireworks setting off during the same period, down 22 percent from the previous year, it said.

No death or cases of eyeball extraction were reported, it said.

The drop of fireworks sales is attributed to people's rising awareness of environment protection as the city had been shrouded in smog for a long period of time last month.

Beijing mayor Wang Anshun visited a fire-fighting command center on Thursday and expressed his gratitude to the cadres and citizens who did not set off fireworks or reduced the amount of fireworks during the holiday.