CARACAS, July 10 (Xinhua) -- Seven members of Venezuela's Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB) were injured in an explosion on Monday in Altamira, a district in eastern Caracas, Communication Minister Ernesto Villegas said.
Villegas posted video footage of the incident, which took place just before 6 p.m. local time, to his Twitter account.
The soldiers, who are members of the the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), were on patrol in Altamira, where much of the capital's anti-government protests have been concentrated.
In an interview broadcast by state-run VTV, the commander of the GNB, Sergio Rivero Marcano, said the "very powerful" explosive device inflicted second-degree burns on two of the soldiers, and third-degree burns on the remaining five.
"There is a combination of several pyrotechnic elements that when put together into a single artifact, the explosive wave is greater, the explosive tends to cause more injury," said Rivero.
The soldiers were taken to a military hospital in Caracas and are expected to recover, he said.
Increasingly violent anti-government demonstrations have claimed around 90 lives since April.
