TEHRAN Iran's police have arrested 100 illegal Afghan aliens in central Mehriz and northwestern Kashmar, local police said Tuesday.

87 Afghan aliens crammed on a truck heading for Tehran from Mehriz were arrested Tuesday.

Over the past Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2000-March 11, 2001), 3,000 illegal Afghan aliens were arrested in the central Province of Yazd.

In a separate operation, 13 other Afghan aliens were arrested in Kashmar in the border Province of Khorasan in northeastern Iran by the local security forces on Monday.

The great number of Afghans living in Iran is commonly cited as one of the reasons contributing to the high rate of unemployment and drug abuse in the country.

Some 1.4 million Afghans still remain in Iran, half of them illegal residents, according to official government reports.

An Iranian government official said recently that about 500 Afghans manage to jump the border to Iran daily through Sistan-Baluchestan border of Iran.

Iran and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reached an agreement last April for the voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees.

Iran is a major transit route for drugs from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the West and has also large domestic drug problem.

Last July, the Iranian authorities started constructing outposts and a barbed wire fence with electronic monitoring devices along the 945-kilometer (587-mile) border with Afghanistan. A budget of 200 billion rials ($25 million) was allocated for the project.