The BBC has pulled a controversial documentary accused of acting as a propaganda platform for Hamas.

The broadcaster removed the film Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone from BBC iPlayer on Friday morning, after days of criticism over its featuring of children linked to the terror group.

The BBC issued an apology on Wednesday night after the son of a Hamas minister was featured prominently in the documentary without the connection being disclosed to viewers.

It subsequently emerged that another of the three children who appeared as central protagonists in the film was the daughter of a former captain in the Hamas-run police force, while the third had been photographed posing with Hamas fighters.

The decision by the BBC to pull the documentary from iPlayer came a day after Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, said she would hold urgent discussions with the broadcaster over its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, was broadcast on Monday evening as an account of the conflict through the eyes of three ordinary Gazan children.

However, the BBC had failed to tell viewers that 14-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri, the central figure and narrator of the documentary, is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, the deputy minister of agriculture in the Hamas-run government.

The BBC said it “had not been informed” of the connection by the documentary’s producers before it was broadcast.