The United States Embassy in Sudan says it has destroyed passports of the country’s nationals who were processing their visas when the war broke out.

On Friday, the U.S. Mission in Khartoum released a statement to clarify the action it took, amid the ongoing violence in the country between the rival factions of the military government.

“Our Embassy in Khartoum had passports of Sudanese and other third country nationals who were in the process of applying for visas and passports of U.S citizens applying for consular services,” the statement read in parts. “Because the security environment did not allow us to safely return those passports. We followed our procedure to destroy them rather than leave them behind unsecured,”

It further noted that “It is standard operating procedure during a drawdown to take precautions to not leave behind any documents, materials, or information that could fall into the wrong hands and be misused.”

The development came after the American government shut down its embassy and evacuated its diplomats, embassy employees and citizens in the North African nation amid the escalating violence.

Since April, Sudan has been gripped by violence following disagreements between the Sudanese military, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo.

The conflict between the rival generals has led to the killing of more than 500 people and injuring over 4000 others in the battle that has turned the streets in the country’s capital, Khartoum, and other places into war zones.