Hundreds of south Sudanese danced, screamed and waved flags as the announcement was broadcast on a line of TV sets in a square in the center of the southern capital Juba.

A total of 98.83 percent of voters from Sudan's oil-producing south chose to secede from the north in last month's referendum, the chairman of the vote's organizing commission Mohammed Ibrahim Khalil said.

The referendum is the climax of a 2005 north-south peace accord that set out to end Africa's longest civil war and instill democracy in a country that straddles the continent's Arab-sub Saharan divide.

Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir earlier said he accepted the result, allaying fears that the split could reignite conflict over the control of the south's oil reserves.