Hundreds of students were evacuated from an international school in Kuala Lumpur today after a bomb threat police later found to be a hoax.

A police bomb squad searched the International School Kuala Lumpur in the upmarket Ampang area after a threat was telephoned in to school authorities around mid-morning. They found nothing, police spokesman Mohamad Noor Hamat said.

The bomb threat was made in a telephone call to the school around mid-morning, said the school's marketing director Hilda Al Poosilva.

All students were evacuated immediately and classes were cancelled for the day.

Several Western countries have urged their citizens in Malaysia to be on a heightened state of alert after a bombing killed nearly 200 people in neighbouring Indonesia's resort island of Bali on Oct 12.

Western embassies here have also tightened security.

Malaysia has detained more than 70 alleged Islamic militants over the past year, many of them said to be members of the Jemaah Islamiyah organisation which is a suspect in the Bali bombing. AFP