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The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.

'Risk to Undermine Trust'

The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.

"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.

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

"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.

A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."