TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico (AFP)— Fourteen administrative employees of the police force in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas were kidnapped Tuesday by armed men as they were travelling along a highway, local authorities said.

State and federal forces launched “a search operation for 14 male members of the police facility” who were captured by armed men, the state security agency said in a statement.

The incident occurred on a stretch of highway that connects the town of Ocozocoautla and the state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez, some 700 kilometre (435 miles) southwest of Mexico City.

In videos posted online, whose authenticity prosecutors said they are working to verify, several individuals with long guns and bulletproof vests can be seen next to at least three trucks that block a highway.

The newspaper Reforma reported that armed men stopped a vehicle that was transporting police employees, took their cell phones away and ordered them to lie on the ground.

The perpetrators set the women in the group free, but captured the men, according to Reforma.

Confrontations between criminals and law enforcement have multiplied recently in Ocozocoautla.

The area is a popular transit zone for migrants and drug trafficking.

Mexico has registered more than 350,000 murders and some 110,000 disappearances, the majority attributed to criminal organisations, since the launch of a controversial military anti-drug offensive in late 2006.