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Ali Ahmad's eyes fill with tears as he lifts his shirt to show deep bruises across his back.

While he was detained, Iranian officers struck him and accused him of spying, he says. "They used hoses, water pipes and wooden boards to beat me. They treated us like animals."

He was speaking to the BBC earlier this month at Islam Qala on the two countries' border, before crossing back over to Afghanistan. His name has been changed to protect his identity.

Iran - which says it hosts more than four million undocumented Afghans who fled conflict in their homeland - has been stepping up deportations for months. In March those without papers were given a July deadline to depart voluntarily, but since a brief war with Israel in June, the authorities have forcibly returned hundreds of thousands of Afghans, alleging national security concerns, BBC reported.

A radioactive wasp nest with radiation levels ten times of what is allowed under regulations was found at a facility that once produced parts for US nuclear weapons, federal officials said, BBC reported.

"The wasp nest was sprayed to kill wasps, then bagged as radiological waste," says a US Department of Energy report released last week. No wasps were found at the site near Aiken in South Carolina.

Investigators say the contamination is not related to a nuclear waste leak, and that there was no impact to "the environment, or the public".

Environmental groups have criticised the government's handling of the situation, according to BBC.

US special envoy Steve Witkoff will visit Gaza on Friday to inspect food distribution sites, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has confirmed, BBC reported.

Leavitt said Witkoff would visit the territory along with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and "secure a plan to deliver more food and meet with local Gazans to hear first-hand about this dire situation on the ground".

Witkoff, who is on a visit to Israel, also had a "productive" meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the press secretary added, according to BBC.

The US says it is going to impose sanctions on the Palestinians' self-governance organisation as well as the body that represents it on the international stage, BBC reported.

The sanctions affect both the Palestinian Authority (PA) which was established by the Oslo peace accords, and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) which was recognised after the same process as the official representative of the Palestinian people in return for it recognising Israel and renouncing violence.

The State Department said it would deny visas to PLO members and PA officials, according to BBC.