Iran’s military has built a wall along more than 10 kilometers of its eastern border with Afghanistan, the main entry point for immigrants, Iranian media reported Monday.

“More than 10 kilometers of walls have been built on the border and another 50 kilometers is ready to be walled off,” ISNA news agency said, citing General Nozar Nemati, deputy commander of army ground forces, AFP reported.

Iran shares a more than 900 km border with Afghanistan, and hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world.

The flow of Afghan immigrants has increased since the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan took over in August 2021 after US forces withdrew.

Tehran has not given official figures for the number of Afghan immigrants, but member of parliament Abolfazl Torabi has estimated their number at “between six and seven million”.

The authorities have recently increased pressure on “illegal” refugees, regularly announcing expulsions through the eastern border.

“By blocking the border, we want to control the country’s entries and exits” and “better increase the security of border areas”, Nemati said.

In September, Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni said Iran would employ other methods including barbed wire and water-filled ditches in addition to the wall to block the border.

On September 13, the spokesman for the parliamentary National Security Committee, Ebrahim Rezaei, said police plan to “expel more than two million illegal citizens in the near future”.

According to the official IRNA news agency, Afghans represent “more than 90 percent of foreign nationals” in Iran, and “most of them enter the country without identity papers”.

President Masoud Pezeshkian has said his government plans to “repatriate illegal nationals to their country in a respectful manner”.

In the year starting in March 2023 Iran hosted more than 2.7 million documented Afghan refugees, according to the Statistics Centre.

That figure represents 97 per cent of legal migrants in the country.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has extended its condolences to Iran and the families of victims killed in the coal mine explosion over the weekend.

According to a statement issued by the ministry of foreign affairs, the IEA described the explosion as a tragic event.

Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the ministry’s spokesman said in the statement: "The Islamic Emirate expresses its sympathy with the government and people of Iran and we wish divine forgiveness for the deceased."

Iranian media reported Sunday that a gas leak in a coal mine in Tabas, in South Khorasan province, sparked the explosion on Saturday night.

At the time, 69 workers were in the mine.

Latest reports Monday put the death toll at between 35 and 38 people with many injured.

Afghanistan’s ministry of foreign affairs has formally asked to attend the BRICS summit in Kazan next month.

In a written request, the ministry asked Moscow to allow the economic deputy prime minister of the Islamic Emirate, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, to attend the summit.

In 2001, the Goldman Sachs Investment Institute proposed a new alliance to forecast future economic trends.

At its 61st session of the UN General Assembly, in 2006, the foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India and China started preliminary talks.

They called themselves BRIC and their first meeting was held on June 16, 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

When South Africa joined in 2010, the name of the alliance was changed to BRICS.

BRICS was designed to bring together the world's most important developing countries to challenge the political and economic power of the wealthier countries of North America and Western Europe.

This coalition has seen significant expansion in recent years and now includes Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates.

Before this, BRICS leaders (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) announced that Afghanistan should not threaten countries or become a training center for terrorists. Türkiye has also announced its readiness to join this economic alliance.