Reec, who had earlier been effusive about the massive turnout, later appealed for more consideration to be shown to women and the elderly at polling stations.

Polls had been scheduled to close at 5:00 pm (1400 GMT), Short Prom Dresses many polling stations visited by AFP in the regional capital Juba stayed open for another two hours or more to deal with the huge backlog of eager voters.

Some 3.75 million people are registered to Prom Dresses 2012 in the south and around 117,000 in north Sudan, the majority in the capital Khartoum. Emigres were also able to vote in eight countries abroad.

Final results are not expected until next month because of the problems involved in collecting ballot boxes in a vast, war-ravaged region which has just 40 kilometres (25 miles) of tarmac road.

The independence referendum is the centrepiece of the 2005 north-south peace deal that ended a devastating 22-year civil war in which some two million people were killed and another four million fled their homes.

South Sudanese president Salva Kiir was Homecoming Dresses the first to cast his ballot in Juba.

"This is the historic moment the people of south Sudan have been waiting for," Kiir said, holding up his hand to reporters to show the indelible ink that demonstrated he had voted.

US envoys Scott Gration and John Kerry as well as Hollywood star George Clooney watched as Kiir cast his ballot.

Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, an Cheap Graduation Dresses man who led the north's war against the south for a decade and a half before signing the peace deal six years ago, has said he will respect the vote's outcome if it is "free and transparent."

Men grinning and waving, women singing and dancing, south Sudanese dressed in their finest queued by the thousand Sunday to vote in a landmark referendum expected to create the world's newest state.

They had begun forming up in orderly sex-Cheap Homecoming Dresses lines from soon after midnight, eager to be among the first to have their say on whether the impoverished south should finally break away from rule by Khartoum, ending five decades of conflict between north and south.

When the polls finally opened at 8:00 am (0500 GMT) for the start of the seven-day vote, the excitement was electric. Each time the next vote was inserted in the ballot box, women ululating in celebration.

South Sudanese from the diaspora were also voting Sunday in Kenya, Uganda and Egypt.