Security was boosted on Thursday around the Kuwaiti Embassy in Beirut after an anonymous caller made a bomb threat, a security official said.

"Someone called a foreign press agency at about 9:55 a.m. and said that at 10 a.m., the embassy would be bombed," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"We immediately boosted security around the embassy and advised the staff working on the upper floors to move down to the lower floors."

A man who answered the telephone at the embassy said there was no one in the building.

The incident comes amid high tension in Lebanon, which is mired in its worst political crisis since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

It also comes amid threats of attacks against Israel by Hezbollah after the killing in Damascus of one of its top officials, Imad Mugniyah.

The tense situation prompted Saudi Arabia earlier this week to advise its citizens against travelling to Lebanon. The French Embassy this month also shut two of its cultural centers in the country because of security concerns.

-AFP/NOW Staff