(sth) Luxembourg police have officially closed their investigation into a bomb scare at the Utopolis cinema and Auchan shopping centre in Luxembourg-Kirchberg on Thursday evening, giving the buildings the all-clear.

In a press release, police confirmed that a caller had threatened Utopolis.

Following this threat, the cinema and the shopping centre next to it were evacuated as a security measure.

The police bomb unit and sniffer dogs searched both premises.

At 9:47pm, spokesman Frank Stoltz confirmed to the Luxemburger Wort that police had given the all-clear for both buildings.

"The shopping centre received the all-clear at 9:15pm, the cinema at 9:45pm," he said. "Nothing suspicious was found in any of the buildings."

On request, Stoltz confirmed the police were treating the incident as a "concrete threat" following an "alarm".

"We took this incident very seriously," he said.

"Such threats are never treated lightly. This was the reason why the complete emergency procedure was initiated."

Stoltz also pointed out that making bomb threats is punishable with up to five years in prison or a fine of 3,000 euros.

A criminal probe into the incident has been launched.

The first police teams arrived at 6:10pm, locking down the area.

They initially evacuated the cinema, leading patrons out towards the Circuit de la Foire.

Approximately 10 minutes later, they evacuated the nearby Auchan shopping centre.

They then deployed sniffer dogs in both buildings.

Tracey-Scott Oliver, a wort.lu/en reader, was at Utopolis when the building was evacuated: "We were in the cinema when the bomb threat was announced and got evacuated. It was pretty scary. Police with machine guns running through the building, employees shouting at everyone to get out of the building and to get as far away from the building as possible.

"We were running to the car with the kids. I was scared out of my mind but had to keep composed for the kids. We have spent the last two days glued to the TV watching London, which made it even worse I think. Poor kids think this is normal."

An Auchan visitor on the scene said: "I just entered the shopping centre when a group of people came running towards me. Everybody had to leave the building as quickly as possible.

"Later, we were told to wait for two hours until we could re-enter, or until we could take our cars out of the car park."

Another visitor had just entered the car park when he was immediately redirected to the exit by other people.

He had to leave his car in the car park as well.

He said the evacuation was carried out in a very good and orderly fashion, with no panic: "We waited in the restaurant opposite Auchan, and everybody was rather relaxed."

Employees of State Street Bank right next to Utopolis were allowed to enter the bank's building to fetch their personal belongings but had to leave right after.

At around 8pm, police tweeted that people could begin taking their cars out of Auchan's car park.

At about 8.45pm, they confirmed they had officially concluded their investigations and found no threat.