A Christian bishop blew the “last trumpet” on rule by the Muslim north yesterday as a week-long referendum on independence for south Sudan closed and a slow count was poised to start.

Polling stations around the southern regional capital of Juba sealed their ballot boxes at 5 p.m., AFP correspondents said.

The deputy chairman of the referendum commission, Chan Reec, announced earlier that the only extension would be among émigré voters in flood-hit areas of Australia.

At the polling station set up near the tomb of veteran rebel leader John Garang in Juba, where southern president Salva Kiir was among the first to vote on January 9, returning officers were taking a break before launching the marathon task of counting and collating the votes.

The final result, which will determine whether south Sudan secures recognition as the 193rd UN member state in July, is not expected before next month.

A senior official of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) said the north would accept the outcome of the vote even if it was for partition of Africa’s largest nation.

“The voting has now finished. The ballot boxes are locked away safely. The count will start after a break,” referendum commission official Joseph Kharin told AFP.

UN helicopter crews were to assist vote organisers in picking up ballot boxes from the remote countryside of a vast, underdeveloped region which has just 40 kilometres of paved road.

Bishop Paul Yugusuk was among the last to have his say in the referendum, centrepiece of a 2005 peace deal that ended a devastating 22-year civil war pitting the mainly Christian and African south against the north, at a cost of around two million lives.