BBC bosses have found Andrew Marr guilty of breaching editorial guidelines with a ‘misleading’ claim that Israel had killed ‘lots of Palestinian kids’.

The Corporation’s extraordinary ruling against one of its most senior personalities is almost unprecedented.

It follows a complaint about comments made by the presenter on his flagship Sunday news programme.

Andrew Marr during filming for the BBC1 current affairs programme The Andrew Marr Show

During the April 8 edition, Marr concluded a discussion of the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons attack on civilians by saying: ‘And the Middle East is aflame again.

‘I mean there’s lots of Palestinian kids being killed further south as well by Israeli forces.’ His comments were a reference to clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians in Gaza.

Anti-semitism campaigner Jonathan Sacerdoti complained, writing: ‘When talking about a story on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, Andrew Marr for some reason decided to talk about Israel (which was unrelated anyway). He stated there’s a lot of Palestinian kids being killed further south by Israeli forces.

‘This is completely incorrect and is made up. This was irrelevant to the conversation on Syria… and also actually completely false.’

BBC producers initially tried to defend Marr’s comments by pointing to the fact that five ‘younger people’ had been killed between the beginning of the year and the date of the programme.

They also said several Palestinian children and younger people were killed in the week following the broadcast, but Mr Sacerdoti argued that later events could not be used to justify Mr Marr’s comments.

People carry an injured Palestinian after Israeli security forces' intervention during a protest held in Gaza City, Gaza, on June 22

His complaint has been upheld.

Fraser Steel, head of executive complaints at the BBC, wrote to Mr Sacerdoti saying: ‘The BBC’s guidelines require that output is “well sourced” and “based on sound evidence”.

‘In the absence of any evidence to support the reference to “lots” of children being killed at the time of transmission, it seems to us to have risked misleading audiences on a material point.

‘We therefore propose to uphold this part of your complaint.'