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The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."