CHAD severed diplomatic ties with neighbouring Sudan yesterday and threatened to expel 200,000 Sudanese refugees, the day after government troops beat off a fierce rebel attack on its capital, Ndjamena.

President Déby accuses Sudan of arming rebels who had sped across the vast desert country from bases in Darfur in a fleet of pick-up trucks. “The international community has been totally deaf and dumb on the situation,” Mr Déby said after a cabinet meeting. “Enough is enough.”

Sudan helped Mr Déby to gain power in a 1990 coup, but he fell out with his neighbour over his handling of the Darfur crisis. Since then he has faced a coup attempt, several high-level defections from his armed forces, and a spate of increasingly bold rebel attacks.

With the two giant but impoverished African countries now on the brink of war, he told cheering crowds at a rally in Ndjamena that if no international solution were found to the Darfur crisis by the end of June, Chad would no longer shelter refugees from the area. Thousands of people fled into Chad after Sudanese government forces cracked down on a rebellion in Darfur in 2003, massacring local black African tribes they said were sympathetic to the insurgents. Many Chadians, including the President, belong to the same nomadic desert tribes that straddle the common border.

Sudan suspected Mr Déby of supporting the aims of Darfur rebels opposed to government-supported dominance by Arab tribes. Khartoum reacted by backing Chadian groups who were against the President and a move to change the constitution to allow him a third term.

For months, international observers have said that failure to settle the conflict in Darfur risked destabilising the entire region, especially Chad. Last month the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, said that a state of “escalating proxy war between Sudan and Chad” existed and threatened a new humanitarian catastrophe on both sides of the border.

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