Nairobi/Juba – Voters in southern Sudan headed to the polls Saturday on the final day of a week of voting in a landmark referendum on independence for the south.
Surveys at this point – after the turnout had already passed the 60-per-cent threshold needed to make the vote valid – indicated a clear decision in favour of independence for the region.
Election observers over the past few days had praised the generally peaceful voting, which got underway on January 8, although violence between two rival tribes in the restive Abyei region had left around 100 people dead.
The referendum is the centerpiece of a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the mainly Muslim north and the Christian and Animist south – a conflict that claimed the lives of more than 2 million southerners and displaced 4 million more.
The United Nations said preliminary results from the vote were expected in early February, but that a final result would be declared either February 7 or 14 under the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission’s timeline.