The BBC’s head of news has told staff that the Hamas government and its military wing are “different”.

Deborah Turness made the comments in a meeting intended to reassure staff after the “catastrophic failure” of broadcasting the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.

The BBC broke editorial guidelines by not disclosing that Abdullah, a boy at the centre of the now-pulled documentary, was the son of Ayman Alyazouri, the Hamas-run government’s deputy minister of agriculture.

Ms Turness addressed the coverage of the scandal, suggesting that there was a difference between Gaza’s Hamas-run government and its Hamas-run military.

The UK Government makes no such distinction, and the group is “proscribed in its entirety”.

In a video shared with The Telegraph, Ms Turness tells staff: “I think it’s really important that we are clear that Abdullah’s father was a deputy agriculture minister, and therefore was a member of the Hamas-run government, which is different to being part of the military wing of Hamas.

“Externally it’s often simplified that he was in Hamas, and I think it’s an important point of detail that we need to continually remind people of the difference.”

Sources have suggested that a request for response on this issue was made by a member of the BBC Arabic service.

Ms Turness made no suggestion that the BBC documentary should not have been pulled.