OSLO: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Japan`s Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors pushing for a nuclear weapons ban.

The group, also known as Hibakusha and founded in 1956, received the honour `for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again`, said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

Nihon Hidankyo`s co-head expressed surprise. `Never did I dream this could happen, Toshiyuki Mimaki told reporters in Tokyo with tears in his eyes. `It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintainspeace,` he said. But `if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won`t end there, he warned.

The Nobel committee expressed alarm that the international`nuclear taboo` that developed in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 was `under pressure`.

`This year`s prize is a prize that focuses on the necessity of upholding this nuclear taboo. And we all have a responsibility, particularly the nuclear powers,` Frydnes told reporters.

`A nuclear war could destroy our civilisation,` Frydnes warned.

The Nobel committee noted that next year would mark 80 years since the US used two nuclear bombs to kill 214,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Following Friday`s announcement, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres called on world leaders to eliminate all nuclear weapons, which he called `devices of death`.-AFP