A manhunt is under way in Kenya after the escape from a Nairobi police cell of a man police claim had confessed to murdering and dismembering 42 women.

Collins Jumaisi Khalusha, 33, described by police as a “vampire, a psychopath” after his arrest on July 15, broke out on Tuesday morning along with 12 undocumented Eritrean migrants, Kenya police spokeswoman Resila Onyango said.

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The breakout was discovered when officers made a routine visit to the police station cells at about 5am (02:00 GMT) to serve the prisoners breakfast, the police said in a separate statement.

“On opening the cell door, they found that 13 prisoners had escaped by cutting the wire mesh in the basking bay,” it said, referring to an area in the station where detainees could get access to fresh air.

The police station is located in the upmarket Nairobi district of Gigiri, home to the regional headquarters of the United Nations and numerous embassies.

Khalusha had appeared in a court in the Kenyan capital on Friday, when the magistrate ordered him to be held for 30 more days to enable police to complete their investigations.

Mohamed Amin, the head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, said after his arrest that Khalusha had confessed to murdering 42 women over two years from 2022 and that his wife had been his first victim.

“We are dealing with a serial killer, a psychopathic serial killer who has no respect for human life, who has no respect and dignity,” Amin said at the time.

However, the suspect’s lawyer, John Maina Ndegwa, said in court that Khalusha was “tortured” into making the statement. Prosecutors denied these allegations.

Ten butchered female bodies trussed up in plastic bags were found in the dumpsite in an abandoned quarry in the Nairobi slum of Mukuru, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) said last month.

The location is just 100 metres from a police station. This threw a spotlight on Kenya’s police force which was under scrutiny after a brutal crackdown on antigovernment demonstrations, with rights groups accusing officers of using excessive force.

The state-funded KNCHR said in July it was carrying out its own investigations into the Mukuru case because “there is a need to rule out any possibility of extrajudicial killings”.

Kenya’s police watchdog, the Independent Police Oversight Authority, had also said it was looking into whether there was any police involvement or a “failure to act to prevent” the killings.

People watch from the edge of a quarry where human remains were found in the Mukuru slum in Nairobi [File: Andrew Kasuku/AP]