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A Mexican gang seized three officials in the central state of Morelos on Monday in order to force authorities to release one of the gang's high-ranking members, who had been detained hours earlier.
The attorney-general's office in Morelos said it had arrested a member of the Pueblos Unidos criminal gang, after carrying out a raid as part of its fight against extortion.
Pueblos Unidos retaliated by capturing three people employed by the attorney-general's office and holding them hostage.
In a statement, the office said that it released the detained suspect in order to safeguard the lives of its staff, but stressed that the kidnapping of its employees would not go unpunished.
The gang released all three employees on Monday evening local time, the statement added. One was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound but was in a stable condition.
The decision to release the detained gang member followed official guidelines, which say the lives of kidnap victims have to be put first, according to the statement.
Criminal gangs in Mexico often unleash a wave of violence in an attempt to force a release after one of their leaders is arrested.
In 2019, hundreds of gunmen from the Sinaloa cartel flooded into the city of Culiacán in northern Mexico following the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, the son of the cartel's infamous founder, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.
They erected burning roadblocks and engaged in deadly gunfights with security forces.
The violence was such that the president at the time, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, personally ordered the release of Ovidio Guzmán.
López Obrador said that he had given the order "so as not to put the population at risk".
"The capture of a criminal is not worth more than people's lives," he added.
Guzmán was recaptured in 2023 and extradited to the United States.
More recently, the killing of one Mexico's most wanted criminals, Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera, in February of this year triggered retaliatory attacks from his cartel in 20 Mexican states.
President Claudia Sheinbaum deployed thousands of soldiers to the states affected to quell the violence.