A van, carrying civilians and Lebanese army troops, blew up Wednesday in the northern port city of Tripoli, killing at least 10 people, just hours before President Michel Suleiman was scheduled to head to Syria in the first such summit between the two countries in three years.

Security officials said another 24 people were injured in the bombing that went off early morning.

News reports said at least seven soldiers were among the dead.

They said the bomb was placed on a sidewalk on the Banks street commercial district of Tripoli.

The force of the blast blew the remains of some of the dead onto the roofs of nearby buildings, an AFP correspondent said.

Tripoli saw sectarian fighting last month in which 23 people were killed in battles between militants from the rival Sunni Muslim and Alawite communities in the neighborhoods of Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen.

There has been tension between the two communities ever since Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war. Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam and straddle the border into neighboring Syria whose President Bashar al-Assad is a follower of the faith.

The explosion came hours before Suleiman was due to hold a landmark summit with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus aimed at establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries for the first time.

It also came a day after a new national unity government formed by Prime Minister Fouad Saniora following 18 months of deadly tensions with the Hizbullah-led opposition finally won a vote of confidence in parliament.

The standoff between the two sides had pushed the country to the brink of a new civil war and was only ended by an Arab-brokered power-sharing agreement in Doha.(Naharnet-AFP)