Apple Inc. on Wednesday removed from its app store an app that protesters in Hong Kong have used to track police movements, saying it violated rules because it was used to ambush police.

The U.S. tech giant had come under fire from China over the app, with the Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper calling the app "poisonous" and decrying what it said was Apple's complicity in helping the protesters.

Apple had only just last week approved the HKmap.live app, which crowdsources the locations of both police and protesters, after rejecting it earlier in the month.