"We had counted 2,650 Afghans to return home, and unfortunately they more than 50 percent of them died in the earthquake. We are in the process of finding out the exact figure," Ahmad Hosseini, head of the interior ministry's bureau of alien affairs, told state television.

Previously, officials had feared as many as 3,600 Afghans had been killed in the quake, which left around 30,000 people dead when it flattened much of the historic city.

Millions of Afghans fled the 1979 Soviet invasion and later Taliban regime to find refuge in neighbouring Iran. Close to two million remain here, many of them working in menial jobs or in the construction sector.

Around half a million Afghans have been repatriated, with the help of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, since the collapse of the Taliban regime.

TERRA.WIRE