The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to Venezuela's opposition leader and democracy activist Maria Corina Machado, a "unifying" figure in what has become a "brutal" state, the Nobel jury said.

Machado, who has lived in hiding for the past year, was honoured "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy," said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

"I am in shock," the 58-year-old opposition leader could be heard saying in a video sent to AFP by her press team.

The committee hailed her as "one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times".

"Despite serious threats against her li

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