Africa News
Southern Sudan independence gets almost 99 per cent vote backing
Jan 30, 2011, 7:32 GMT
Nairobi - Just short of 99 per cent of Southern Sudanese have voted to secede from the north and form a 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 per cent of almost 4 million voters had opted for independence.
The turnout far exceeded the 60 per-cent 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.
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