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The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.

"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.

'Risk to Damage Credibility'

The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.

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

"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.

A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."