JUBA - The marathon task of counting the ballot in south Sudan's independence referendum was under way yesterday after the week-long poll on the partition of Africa's largest nation closed.

"Secession. Secession. Secession," the returning officer intoned on Saturday night as he carefully unfolded each ballot paper cast at a polling station in a school in the southern capital of Juba before pronouncing the voter's choice.

There was the odd vote for unity with the mainly Arab, Muslim north but they were dwarfed by the huge pile in favour of turning the mainly Christian, African south into the world's newest nation and putting the seal on five decades of civil conflict.

The count was being conducted by torchlight, creating an almost religious atmosphere in the small classroom. The school has no mains electricity.

Each vote was passed for checking to two other polling station staff and shown to domestic and international observers. Some stations were expected to continue the count through the night. Others, particularly in rural areas where many were out in the open, locked away the ballot boxes for the night and were due to start counting late yesterday.

The deputy chairperson of the referendum commission, Chan Reece, said the only extension to polling would be among emigré voters in flood-hit areas of Australia, who would have a further five days.

An Anglican bishop blew the "last trumpet" after being among the final people to vote before polls closed at 6pm on Saturday. Yugusuk, after sounding his orange vuvuzela, draped in the south Sudanese flag, said: "This is the signal not only of the end of the voting but of an end to our slavery, oppression and the beginning of our freedom."