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The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.

'Risk to Erode Trust'

The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.

"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, 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 sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."