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The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'

The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.

"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."