Nanyang hit by a bomb scare
At about 10am, an anonymous caller told a Nanyang telephone operator that a bomb had been planted in the four-storey building.
"The caller warned that the bomb would explode at about noon," a Nanyang staff told malaysiakini.
A senior Nanyang officer who requested anonymity confirmed that a bomb threat was made against the newspaper.
"The caller warned us to be careful," he said, refusing to tell more.
About 20 police personnel, accompanied by a bomb squad and a few ambulances, arrived soon after to comb the premises.
All Nanyang staff were evacuated from the building by noon.
After a two-hour search, the police declared the building safe.
"Workers were told to check the vicinity of their work areas to see if there were any mysterious packages," said a Nanyang staff.
Controversial takeover
"We were told that the bomb threat was made from a public phone in Cheras," a source said.
In May, Nanyang's sister paper China Press received a bomb scare at the height of the controversial takeover of the two dailies by MCA, which also turned out to be a false alarm.
Last month, MCA Youth delegates were asked to leave the conference hall during their annual general meeting after a bomb threat was received. An exhaustive police search, however, found nothing.
The day after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC, thousands of people were evacuated from the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur after a hoax bomb scare.
A number of buildings, including those which house US companies IBM and Citibank, were also hit by false bomb scares over the past two weeks.
