JUBA, Sudan (AP) — Around four million Southern Sudanese voters have begun casting their ballots in a weeklong referendum on independence expected to split Africa’s largest nation in two.
South Sudan president Salva Kiir called the vote a “historic moment” as he cast his vote in front of a cheering crowd of hundreds of Sudanese voters lined up in front of the polling station, along with actor and Sudan activist George Clooney and U.S. Sen. John Kerry.
The oil-rich, mainly Christian south is widely expected to secede from the mainly Muslim north. The north has promised to let the south go peacefully if it votes to secede.
The referendum is part of a 2005 peace deal that ended a two-decade civil war in which over 2 million died.
