Teachers protesting the reported massacre of 43 students in late September clashed with police Tuesday in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero and took a state official hostage.

Some 400 teachers, members of the Guerrero State Teachers Union (CETEG), faced riot police after vandalizing the offices of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the state capital Chilpancingo.

Media reports said teachers wielding sticks and bats and with their faces covered, set fire to part of the building's exterior and rampaged through the interior, sending PRI employees scurrying out of the premises.

After police arrested two of them, others seized the state under-secretary of public security, Jose Juan Gatica, as a bargaining chip in negotiating their colleagues' release, according the daily Reforma online.

Gatica was reportedly released shortly afterwards, said the daily online. It is unclear whether any agreements were reached between the teachers and the police.

Cuauhtemoc Salgado, head of the PRI in the state, said no one was injured at the offices, but the material damage was considerable, according to Mexico's radio news network GrupoFormula.

The 43 victims were students from the Raul Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers' College of Ayotzinapa in the city of Iguala, Guerrero.

Investigators have found the students were attacked by municipal police in the city of Iguala on the orders of Jose Luis Abarca, the city mayor.

The students were allegedly on their way to disrupt an event organized by the mayor's wife, Maria de los Angeles Pineda, when they were ambushed and shot at on Sept. 26. Six were killed in the incident. The remaining 43 students were reportedly abducted and then handed over to a local gang, with whom the mayor allegedly has close ties.