BAFQ, Yazd Province Police have impounded two lorries stuffed with 207 illegal Afghan immigrants in this central city on Saturday, Bafq Governor Masoud Shariati said here Sunday.

He told IRNA that the Afghan aliens have been handed over to the Judiciary.

The official said that 3,000 Afghans live in Yazd Province.

Earlier in the day, another lorry packed with 120 illegal Afghan immigrants overturned in the southeastern border city of Zahedan, killing a two-year-old boy and injuring 65 others.

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

In December, the Iranian press cited officials from the UNHCR in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad as saying the voluntary repatriation program for Afghans was put on hold this week ahead of a UN Security Council decision on the sanctions.

Some 175,000 Afghans have returned home from Iran since the repatriation scheme was launched in April.

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

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

The UNHCR puts the total number of Afghans residing in Iran at 1.4 million. Iranian authorities say there is an additional 700,000 unreported illegal Afghan aliens residing in the country.

The agreement signed in February (implemented starting April) between the UNHCR and Iran provides that some 100,000 refugees are to return to Afghanistan over a period of six months.

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.

(IRNA)

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