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'We have also alerted all airports and our counterparts in neighbouring countries to be on the lookout' for the suspect, police chief Musa Hassan said.
The five-year-old, Sharlinie Mohd Nashar, disappeared on Wednesday from a playground about 200m from her house in Taman Medan, a middle-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.
The areas is just kilometres from a shophouse where eight-year-old Nurin Jazlin Jazimin's body was found stuffed in a sports bag in September. The girl had been sexually abused and killed.
Police have yet to find her killer, and they fear that Sharlinie's abduction could be linked.
Tan Sri Musa said there was also a possible link to the kidnap of a six-year-old girl on Monday, which took place about 2km from where Sharlinie disappeared.
The six-year-old was found unharmed three hours later in a neighbourhood about 20km away.
She had apparently followed a motorcyclist who offered to take her to see birds and cats. This was a tactic said to have been also used by a child molester in two cases of kidnapping and sexual assault in Kampung Baru in Kuala Lumpur last year.
In the latest incident, Sharlinie and her sister, Sharliena, were playing at the playground near their double-storey link house when she was kidnapped.
At a press conference called by the police on Thursday, Sharliena said she saw a woman bribing her sister with sweets, and then dragging her into a big black car.
She said she did not recognise the woman, who was wearing high-heeled shoes and had shoulder-length hair.
'My sister screamed for help...but I could not do anything,' the girl said.
Sharlinie's mother, Mrs Suraya Ahmad, 28, said she was in the kitchen when the incident occurred and was unaware that the children had gone off to the playground by themselves.
'Please give us back our daughter,' she pleaded between sobs at the press conference.
'Please don't hurt her.'
Police are poring over images recorded by CCTVs in public places such as bus terminals and train stations.
Its paramilitary wing, the General Operations Force, has also been enlisted in the search.
Police have also released a sketch of a man suspected of abducting the other six-year-old girl on Monday.
The Malaysian media yesterday gave blanket coverage to the case of Sharlinie, with the Malay and English newspapers devoting up to five pages to the search and appeal for information.
Local radio station Suria FM is giving hourly updates.
Posters with her photograph have been plastered all over her neighbourhood, and in downtown Kuala Lumpur, by her neighbours.
The MP for Petaling Jaya South, Datuk Donald Lim, has offered RM5,000 (S$) for information leading to the safe return of the child.
The police chief for the Petaling Jaya district, Assistant Commissioner of Police Arjunaidi Mohamad, told reporters yesterday that the department had received hundreds of tips-offs via phone calls and text messages.
Sharlinie's father, Mr Mohd Nashar Mat Hussain, 29, a wireman from Terengganu, said he also received a spate of calls and text messages.
One caller claimed to have seen the girl crying and trying to escape from a man in Puduraya in Kuala Lumpur.
Another person told him his daughter was at a bus stop in Butterworth, Penang.
But all the tip-offs amounted to nothing.
