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The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.

'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'

The regulator's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.

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

"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."