Police are investigating reports of a break-in at a university in which two busts of Israel’s first president were taken.

Footage circulating online showed two masked men smashing a glass display case in Manchester University’s chemistry building and removing two busts of Chaim Weizmann, who had been a lecturer there in the early 1900s.

The Palestine Action Group said it had “hijacked” the busts to mark the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917, in which British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour advocated the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people”.

Greater Manchester Police said they “received a report of a burglary at a university building on Oxford Road, Manchester… shortly before midnight last night”.

Weizmann taught at the university after moving to England from Belarus in 1904 and became president of Israel in 1948, shortly after the country’s founding.

Palestine Action said Weizmann “secured the Balfour Declaration”.

In other incidents in the UK, Palestine Action activists targeted the London offices of the Britain-Israel Communications and Research Center and the Jewish National Fund.

They also sprayed red paint over buildings at Cambridge University.

A University of Manchester spokesman said it was “aware of images circulating online following an incident last night at our chemistry building” and reported it to the police.