About 10,000 Afghan refugees have returned home with the support of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) since resuming voluntary repatriation over the past one month, the body's country representative Salvatore Lombardo said Monday.

"About 10,000 Afghan refugees repatriated from Pakistan under the UN Refugee Agency's first month of assisted voluntary repatriation," Lombardo told reporters in Kabul.

Voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees living in the neighboring Pakistan began first in March and the figure of returnees presented by the UNHCR dignitary is about four times less than the figure returned at the same time last year.

The process of repatriation will be halted by the end of October ahead of winter sunset in Afghanistan.

More than 3.5 million Afghan refugees have returned home since the collapse of the Taliban regime in late 2001. But the peak of voluntary return of Afghan refugees took place in 2002, 2003 and 2004 while 2005 and 2006 witnessed a slowdown in the process.

Some 2.5 million Afghan refugees are still living in Pakistan while more than 1.5 million others are in Iran.

Security incidents and unemployment are the main factors that have undermined the process of refugees' return to their war-ravaged country Afghanistan.

UNHCR's country representative to Afghanistan expected the return of some 150,000 Afghan refugees from Pakistan to their homeland this year while in 2003 and 2004 more than 400,000 refugees had voluntarily returned to their homeland.

(Xinhua News Agency March 31, 2008)