About 125,000 refugees have returned to Afghanistan, which still has the world's biggest refugee population, so far this year, with the majority coming back from Pakistan and Iran, a UN spokesman said Monday.

The latest figures come from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Adrian Edwards, spokesperson for the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Afghanistan, when speaking at a press conference.

He said "This is a very substantial level of returns, while it is lower than the same period last year, in which 295,000 Afghans returned."

UNHCR estimates that 2.5 million Afghans are still in Pakistan, while another 900,000 are in Iran. Many have lived in exile for more than 20 years.

The number of Afghan refugees accounts for over 40 percent of the total 8 million under the UNHCR's mandate.

In the past five years, more than 4.6 million Afghan refugees have returned home from abroad, and started their new lives in this middle Asian country.

A sea of Afghans fled their homeland during the Soviet invasion war from 1979 to 1989, and the following Afghan civil war and the U.S.-led war against the Taliban in late 2001.

Source: Xinhua