Police in Iran have seized 500 television satellite dishes whose owners violated a government ban on the equipment to combat a Western "cultural invasion."
The Salam newspaper Wednesday quoted a police official as saying 500 dish antennas had been seized since Saturday when police began implementing the ban.An Interior Ministry official was quoted this week as saying that about 26,000 out of the 27,800 dish antennas in Tehran were removed by their owners before the Saturday deadline.
Unofficial estimates put the number of antennas - used by many Iranians to escape the tedious programs on local television by watching popular Western and Asian satellite shows - at over 200,000.
Newspaper reports said the search for the antennas, banned by parliament in January, will continue, but residents say official announcements on the application of the ban have been confusing.