An extensive search is underway after armed men kidnapped 14 state police officers in southern Mexico on Tuesday, authorities said.

The abducted officers were all men, and are being searched for using an air and ground operation, the secretary of security and citizen protection in Chiapas said in a statement.

The agents were traveling from Ocozocoautla to the state capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, in a personnel truck when they were cut off by several trucks of gunmen, one unnamed state police official explained.

The women in the vehicle were released, while the men were taken away.

Violence in Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, has escalated in recent months due to a territorial dispute between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Just last week, an official with the Attorney General’s Office was shot in Tuxtla Gutierrez.

The unnamed official was seriously wounded, and her partner was killed.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, however, said during a visit to the state last week that there was “in general … peace, there is tranquility” in the region.

With Post wires