Global Courant
The group, all men who worked clerical jobs at a police station, were snatched off a highway in Chiapas.
Security forces in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas are looking for 14 administrative employees of the Ministry of State Security abducted by members of an armed group.
The incident took place about 34.4 km (22 mi) west of the capital Tuxtla Gutierrez on Tuesday, on the highway that connects it to the town of Ocozocoautla.
The abductees were all men and worked in administration at a police station, the state security agency said in a statement.
“Nothing like this has ever happened before,” a ministry spokesman told Reuters news agency, adding that the motive for the kidnapping is under investigation.
The search involves both federal and state agents.
Some Mexican news outlets released video of the alleged kidnapping showing several vehicles stopping on the highway with their doors open and men in body armor pointing guns at the passengers in the vehicles.
The prosecutor’s office said it was investigating the authenticity of the videos, which also showed at least three trucks blocking a highway.
The Reforma newspaper reported that the gunmen took the employees’ mobile phones and ordered them to lie down on the floor. The women in the group were allowed to roam freely, it added.
Tuxtla Gutierrez is located about 700 km southwest of Mexico City.
During a tour of Chiapas last Friday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador minimized the violence in the area, saying that in general there is “peace, there is tranquility” in the state.
The day before the president’s visit, an official of the Attorney General’s Office was seriously injured after being shot in Tuxtla Gutiérrez in an attack that killed the person who was with her.
On June 19, a confrontation between the military and suspected organized crime members killed part of the National Guard and a civilian in Ocozocoautla.
