A bomb hoax at the Chennai airport kept officials and security personnel in tenterhooks for nearly three hours early Monday morning.

An unidentified person telephoned around 3 am claiming that a bomb has been planted at the international terminal and would explode in the morning, airport sources said.

The airport officials banned the entry of visitors and launched a search operation.

Barring an empty unclaimed hand bag, nothing was found in the search which went on for three hours, they said.

Flight operations were not disrupted due to the search operation, the sources added.