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The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".

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

Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.

"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.

'Risk to Erode Trust'

The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.

"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.

"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."