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The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.

"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.

'Risk to Erode Credibility'

The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.

"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."