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The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.

'Potential to Undermine Credibility'

The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement 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 truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."