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The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.

'Possibility to Erode Credibility'

The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.

"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."