US Senator Edward Kennedy, the long-time Democratic Party icon, has been released from a North Carolina hospital after undergoing successful surgery on a malignant brain tumour last week.

The senator was returning to his Hyannis Port, Massachusetts home, his office in Washington said in a statement.

His doctors are pleased with his progress since surgery a week ago, and he will continue to recuperate at home before starting the next phase of his treatment,' the statement said. 'He is thankful for the extraordinary care of the doctors and nurses at Duke, and also for the continued prayers and well wishes from the people of Massachusetts and all over the country.'

The last surviving Kennedy brother, who represents the north- eastern state of Massachusetts in the upper house of Congress, was operated on for about three and a half hours at the Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina last week.

The veteran 76-year-old politician was hospitalized and diagnosed with a glioma, a cancerous tumour of the brain that is particularly dangerous, after he suffered a seizure in mid-May while out walking his dogs.

Doctors said that the seizure was caused by a tumour in Kennedy's left parietal lobe.

The news of Kennedy's condition was met with an outpouring of concern and shock in the United States. A patriarch of the Democratic Party, Kennedy is the third-longest serving US senator and considered one of Congress' most effective-ever legislators.

The Kennedy family has had its share of tragedy. Ted Kennedy's brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated as president in 1963. His other brother Robert Kennedy was also assassinated while running for the White House in 1968. His wife and one of his children have also suffered but recovered from cancer.