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The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.

"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.

'Potential to Damage Trust'

The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.

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

"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."