A nationwide search is underway after three murderers and a robber tunnel their way out of jail

Police across the country have been issued with pictures of the criminals on the run. Some 2,500 officers are directly involved in the hunt, with road blocks and other measures around Irkutsk to find the men who maybe hiding in the taiga.

The four escaped from a high security prison in Markovo near Irkutsk on Saturday after digging a 20 metre tunnel. The escape has all the hallmarks of long planning but for now it is unknown if the men also plotted an escape from this remote region with equal expertise, or are lying low close to the jail.

Three of the convicts - Alexander Rybakov, born in 1985, Yuri Prokhorov, born in 1986, and Vladimir Avdeyev, born in 1975 - are sentenced to long jail sentences for murder. The fourth - Konstantin Pavlovets, born in 1988, is convicted of robbery.

Their absence was noticed during a morning headcount. The four were working as carpenters at the jail, according to reports. 

The prison governor has been suspended on suspicion of negligence, according to news agency reports.