More than 357,000 Afghan refugees have returned home voluntarily from neighboring Pakistan since March 2007, said Salvatore Lombardo, representative of U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to Afghanistan Monday.
"Between 1 March and 31 October 2007 more than 355,000 had returned home from Pakistani voluntarily," Lombardo told newsmen at a press conference.
He also expressed hope that similar number of Afghan refugees would return home next year when voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees with the support of UNHCR resumes early next March.
However, he added that voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees would continue throughout the winter without any break.
The UNHCR official put the number of Afghan refugees returned from Iran over the past 10 months as high as 6,500.
More than 4 million Afghan refugees have returned home since the fall of Taliban regime in late 2001 with vast majority of them from Pakistan and Iran.
Some 3 million registered Afghan refugees, according to UNHCR, are still living in exile including about 2 million in Pakistan and 910,000 in Iran.
Source: Xinhua
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