Malaysian police have arrested an alleged serial rapist accused of attacking three foreign tourists including an 10-year-old boy in the capital Kuala Lumpur over the past week, reports said today.

Police said the 38-year-old former bus driver, who has a string of previous convictions and was released from jail just a month ago, attacked all his victims in hotels in the heart of the city.

His first target was a South Korean woman who was tricked into allowing him into her room at a budget hotel in the popular Bukit Bintang area after he posed as a hotel worker delivering a flask of hot water, they said.

Two days later, he allegedly attacked a 43-year-old Irish woman, forcing his way into her room and tying her up before raping her and stealing cash and an expensive watch.

The latest victim

Police said his last victim before his arrest Tuesday was a young Kuwaiti boy who was on a tour of Malaysia with his schoolmates, and was attacked in the bathroom of another city hotel.

The rapist was identified from closed-circuit television footage and tracked down to a cheap hotel where he was holed up with two women, believed to be prostitutes, the Star said. All three were taken into custody.

Senior police official Abdul Aziz Bulat told the Star that the alleged attacker, from northern Perak state, had been in and out of jail most of his life and was suspected in up to five other rape cases.

He urged hotel operators to step up security measures, such as installing closed-circuit camera on their premises.

"CCTV footage in one of the hotels helped us track down the perpetrator," he said.