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The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.

"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."