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The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.

"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.

'Potential to Erode Confidence'

The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.

"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."