By AFP

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Kenyan police on Thursday said they captured three terror inmates who had escaped from a high-security jail in a scandal that cost the country's prisons boss his job.

The authorities had launched a nationwide manhunt for the trio, who included a convict serving 41 years for involvement in one of Kenya's deadliest terror attacks.

The inmates were picked up in a town about 200 kilometres (120 miles) east of Nairobi, following their jailbreak from Kamiti Maximum Security Prison on the outskirts of the capital on Monday.

"The suspects were arrested after detectives received a tip-off from locals and moved swiftly to arrest the trio," the Directorate of Criminal Investigations said on Twitter, posting a picture of the three.

Prisons boss Wycliffe Ogallo was sacked on Wednesday and briefly arrested over the embarrassing escape, which also saw the arrest of other prison authority officials as well as wardens at the Kamiti facility.

Media reports said there were conflicting accounts about how the three men managed to break out of Kenya's most heavily guarded prison.

A statement from the presidency spoke only of "security breaches".

Of the three, Mohamed Ali Abikar was found guilty in 2019 of being a member of Al-Shabaab and abetting the Somali jihadist group in the slaughter of 148 people at Garissa University in eastern Kenya in April 2015.

It was the second bloodiest terror attack in Kenya's history, surpassed only by Al-Qaeda's bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998 that killed 213 people.

The other two were identified as Joseph Juma Odhiambo, who was arrested in 2019 for trying to enlist in Al-Shabaab, and Musharaf Abdalla Akhulunga who was detained in 2012 over a foiled attack on Kenya's parliament.