None of the some 70 people on board the aircraft en route from Mombasa to Djibouti were injured in the incident that began when the engine failed and caught fire shortly after 10:00 am (0700 GMT), they said.
"We received a distress call from a French military plane that had just left the airport," said Onzere Zagala, chief of police at Mombasa's Moi International Airport. "One of its engines had failed and caught on fire."
"We were then called by the air traffic controllers who said the plane was returning for an emergency landing, and it did," he told AFP from the city, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southeast of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.
Zagala said the plane, the make of which was not clear, had been in Mombasa for three days for maintanence.
The aircraft's destination, Djibouti, is home to France's largest overseas military base.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2006