Scientists have requested the first-ever withdrawal of seeds from  the Svalbard Global Seed Vault , a Doomsday vault built in the Arctic to safeguard the world’s food supplies, officials said Friday. The International Center for Agricultural Research (ICARDA) said it has made a request to take back some of its samples due to Syria’s Civil war.

On September 21, Reuters reported that officials from the ICARDA seed bank in Aleppo — which has moved to Beirut, for now, because of the Syrian civil war — requested 116,000 samples from the Svalbard Vault. The seed samples were needed to restore a collection that had been damaged by the conflict, which has killed approximately 250,000 people and caused more than 11 million to flee their homes.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, preserves millions of seeds, representing more than 860,000 important crop varieties from around the world: a final backup to protect against natural disasters, war, and climate change. It is located 500 feet deep inside a mountain on a remote island between Norway and the North Pole.