Afghan government has destroyed more than 100,000 acres of poppy-cultivated lands over the past five months, Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Muqbal said Sunday.

"The government has smashed 101,614 acres of poppy fields since the beginning of Afghanistan's new year, the year of 1385, over the past five months," Muqbal told a seminar, which opened on Sunday, of the country's provincial governors and police chiefs here.

In the two-day conference, strengthening security, good governance and war on illegal drug would be discussed.

Afghan administration, he also added, had destroyed nearly 70 tones of narcotics since the start of 1385 falling on March 21.

293 drug smugglers have also been arrested during the period, he added.

The post-Taliban Afghanistan, with an output of 4,100 tones of opium poppy in 2005, became the single largest supplier of the raw material used in manufacturing heroin in the world.

However, there are concerns that the menace would further increase in the current year of 2006 as more farmers have allocated swathe parts of their lands for poppy cultivation.

Under a counter-narcotics strategy launched in May 2003, the post-war Afghanistan has been fighting to reduce a poppy cultivation by 75 percent by 2008.

Source: Xinhua