Washington Post – Clashes spread across a key border region in southern Sudan on Saturday after a wave of mutinies among southerners in the northern army, leaving at least 41 people dead as Sudan begins to separate into two nations following a southern referendum on independence last month.

Official results show that 99 percent of southerners who voted backed forming their own country, and full independence is set to take effect in July. The referendum was the core provision of a U.S.-brokered 2005 peace deal between Sudan’s Arab and Muslim north and the rebellious African and largely Christian south, ending a 22-year war that led to the deaths of 2 million people.