Successive firework campaigns have helped bring down the number of firework related incidents

David Brown, the deputy chief officer at Lancashire Trading Standards, said: "It sounds to us as if a rogue batch of fireworks which were not meant for public sale has found its way on to the streets."

Det Supt Graham Gooch of Lancashire Police said: "This is a tragic waste of a young life and it brings home the need to be so careful particularly with this type of high explosive which has to be fired from a tube.

"It is ironic that this should have happened only hours after the county's Trading Standards Officer and our colleagues from the fire service issued a warning about the dangers of these devices."

Almost 830 people in Britain, including a London boy who lost his hand, were treated in hospital for firework injuries in 1998, the last year for which statistics are available.

The government has run a fireworks safety campaign every year since 1996, when two adults and a child were killed and more than 1,200 people injured as a result of exploding fireworks.