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Close to 99 per cent of those who cast their ballots in south Sudan's referendum voted in favor of secession from the north, a referendum official has said.
"The vote for separation was 99.57 per cent," Chan Reek Madut, the deputy head of the commission organizing the vote, told cheering crowds on Sunday in the first official announcement of preliminary results.
The figure did not include voters in north Sudan and other countries, a small proportion of the electorate. Final results from the January 9-15 referendum are expected early next month.
Five of the 10 states in Sudan's oil-producing south showed a 99.9 per cent vote for separation and the lowest vote was 95.5 per cent in favor in the western state of Bahr al-Ghazal which borders north Sudan, according to the preliminary results.
According to the commission website, 3,851,994 votes were cast during the week-long vote.
Hundreds of officials and diplomats had gathered at the grave of John Garang, a rebel leader, for the announcement.
The referendum was promised in a 2005 peace agreement that ended more than two decades of conflict between the Christian-dominated south and the mainly Arab Muslim north.
Rebel leader Garang died in a plane crash just days after signing the deal.
PHOTO CAPTION
A Southern Sudan Referendum Commission staff member shows the voting ballot during the official counting of votes on South Sudanese independence from the north at the Armed Forces Club polling center in El Fasher, north Darfur January 15, 2011.
Al-Jazeera
