The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has protested to the Iranian government about the deportation of thousands of Afghan refugees in the past two weeks.

A UNHCR spokesman in Geneva confirmed a report by the official Taleban newspaper Shariat that some four thousand Afghan refugees had been deported in the past week alone.

He said the large-scale forcible expulsions had resumed since a voluntary repatriation scheme, supervised by the UNHCR, was suspended two weeks ago because of winter and Ramadan.

There are more than a million Afghan refugees in Iran, which is suffering from severe economic problems.