Southern Sudan independence gets nearly 99 per cent vote

NAIROBI - Just short of 99 percent of southern Sudanese have voted to secede from the north and form an independent state, according to preliminary results released Sunday.

The Southern Sudan Referendum Commission said on its website that with all the votes counted, some 98.83 percent of almost four million voters had opted for independence.

The turnout far exceeded the 60 percent limit needed to make the vote valid.

The referendum commission was expected to officially announce the results in the southern capital Juba later in the morning.

January’s referendum was enshrined in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the mainly Muslim north and Christian and Animist south.