Nearly 1 million Afghan refugees return home in eight months

Kabul: A total of 970,000 Afghan refugees have returned to their motherland from Iran, Pakistan and Turkey in the past eight months.

“Among them, about 88,000 are from Pakistan, around 5,000 from Turkey, and the remaining from Iran,” the media quoted Abdul Mutalib Haqqani, spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, Xinhua news agency reported quoting local media outlet TOLO news on Sunday.

According to official data released by the ministry, about 7 million Afghan refugees are living abroad, with the majority of them in Afghanistan’s neighbouring Pakistan and Iran.

The Afghan caretaker government has been repeatedly urging Afghan refugees to cease living abroad as refugees and return home to contribute to the rebuilding of their war-damaged country.