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The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has instructed the BBC to air a evening announcement about its findings.

"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Risk to Damage Trust'

The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.

"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.

"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."