TEHRAN — Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said late on Monday that Iran has provided the best facilities for over three million Afghan refugees over the past 40 years.

Providing jobs, free education, free health facilities, and many other facilities that are widely available to Afghan guests are indicative of Iran’s good hospitality, Mousavi said, IRNA reported.

The remarks came days after a number of Afghan media outlets claimed that more than 40 illegal migrants had been arrested by Iranian border guards and thrown into Harirud River.

Providing jobs, free education, free health facilities, and many other facilities that are widely available to Afghan guests are indicative of Iran’s good hospitality, Foreign Ministry spokesman states.From the first hours the reports were published, relevant Iranian institutions put an investigation of the incident on the agenda, said Mousavi.

He said since the issue is related to the lives of human beings, it was dealt with very carefully and an attempt was also made to take all the aspects of the incident into account immediately.

Accordingly, all relevant institutions, including the political and border departments in the Foreign Ministry, police, Interior Ministry, Intelligence Ministry and General Staff of the Armed Forces, were mobilized to obtain a comprehensive assessment and clarify the facts, the spokesman added.

He further explained that based on confirmed reports received from the border guards of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there has been no such incident at that time, nor have there been any clashes between the Iranian forces and Afghan nationals.

On Sunday, Iran and Afghanistan’s foreign ministers discussed the reports over the phone.

Mohammad Javad Zarif and Mohammad Hanif Atmar exchanged views on joint investigations into the matter and the creation of respective inquiry task forces.

Zarif assured his Afghan counterpart that an Iranian investigative team would soon begin looking into the matter, while Atmar notified the Iranian minister that an Afghan delegation had already visited the northwestern Afghan province of Herat, where the river partly flows and begun a probe.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has rejected as a “bitter joke” a claim by the United States that Iranian guards were involved in the tragic deaths of Afghan migrants near the border.

“Iran has strong ties with Afghanistan & leads the way to help Afghan leaders for inclusive Gvt. What happened to Afghan nationals in Herat is tragic & unrelated to Iran, but U.S. regime’s allegation against Iran is a ‘bitter joke’,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement published via Twitter on May 5.

“The (US) regime is a war criminal in Afghanistan & state sponsor of terrorism across the world,” the statement added.

MH/PA