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The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".

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

The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Erode Credibility'

The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.

"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.

"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."