The Lower House of Afghan parliament voted to sack the country's foreign minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta amid an Afghan refugee crisis on Saturday, parliament spokesman Haseel Noori told Xinhua.

Spanta lost a non-confidence vote as 141 lawmakers voted against him, 73 in his favor and three abstained. This means Spanta has effectively lost his job as foreign minister, Noori said.

The Lower House also voted to fire Refugees Affairs Minister Akbar Akbar on Thursday.

President Hamid Karzai could name them as acting ministers until their successors are ratified by parliament, officials said. Karzai also can nominate Spanta and Akbar as foreign and refugee ministers again, but it needs to be approved by parliament.

The two ministers lost their jobs as the lawmakers are unsatisfied with their performance during a recent Afghan refugee crisis.

Iran says it wants to expel the 1 million illegal Afghan refugees out of its soil. Over 50,000 Afghans were forced out over the past three weeks, UN statistics showed.

Afghan lawmakers say the refugee minister didn't do enough to accommodate the expelled refugees, while the foreign minister failed to persuade Iran into loosing its repatriation policy.

Iran, which neighbors Afghanistan to the west, also houses nearly 1 million registered Afghan refugees.

Source: Xinhua