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The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".

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

The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Risk to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.

"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."