Washington and Paris have admitted that their diplomats destroyed the passports of Sudanese citizens who had applied for visas, trapping them in the war-torn country.

France and the US say their diplomats were simply following protocol to avoid sensitive documents falling into the wrong hands but this has done nothing to assuage the outrage of Sudanese citizens now stranded in a war zone.

“I can hear the warplanes and the bombing from my window, I’m trapped here with no way out” Selma Ali, an engineer who submitted her passport to the US Embassy three days before the war erupted, told The New York Times, which first reported that the travel documents had been shredded.

When fighting erupted on April 15 between the rival forces of Sudan’s two top generals – army chief Abdel Fattah al Buran and paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Daglo – foreign diplomats caught in the crossfire rushed to flee Khartoum.

Such was the rush to evacuate embassies that many – including the British – left behind passports that had been submitted for visa applications. No government has said publicly how many documents were abandoned or destroyed. 

“We recognise that this is an extremely difficult situation. We will continue to monitor the situation closely and the UK Government is working to identify solutions for those affected,” an FCDO spokesperson said last month.

But a US State Department spokeswoman said that it was “standard operating procedure” to destroy documents that “could fall into the wrong hands and be misused.”

“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.”

The US previously faced criticism after acknowledging destroying Afghan passports left at the American embassy in Kabul as the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 2021. In that case Afghan citizens were able to apply for new passports from the new Taliban government.

In Sudan the office that issues new passports is closed due to fighting in the capital.  By Campbell MacDiarmid, The Telegraph