Joyous people poured onto the streets, danced and kissed the earth to mark the oil-rich South Sudan becoming the world's newest country on Saturday, with international leaders, including Vice President Hamid Ansari, witnessing history unfolding in the country's capital in Juba.
India has become one of the first nations to accord diplomatic recognition to South Sudan, the world's youngest country, which split away from the Khartoum-ruled north after decades of a brutal war that claimed nearly 20 lakh lives. The recognition was accorded through a letter by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to South Sudan's new President General Salva Kiir Mayardit, shortly after he assumed power at the Independence Day function in Juba on Saturday.
Thousands of people have lost their lives and thousands more displaced in the violence in South Sudan. The United Nations mission and humanitarian agencies are under strain to protect camps and to provide internally displaced persons with water, food and other emergency relief. What flared up as a political conflict in South Sudan is now assuming an ethnic character.
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