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The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.

"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."