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Mali has temporarily halted educational facilities and higher learning institutions across the nation due to a severe petrol shortage resulting from a restriction on petroleum supplies implemented by Islamist insurgents.

Minister of Education declared on public media that all learning centers would be inactive until 9 November, noting that the transportation of staff and pupils had been affected by the blockade.

He stated that the administration were “making every effort” to end the crisis so that academic sessions could continue on 10 November.

For weeks, the nation has been grappling with a petrol crisis, notably in the main city, after insurgents from an al-Qaeda-linked organization initiated a restriction by targeting fuel trucks on major highways.

Mali is without coastal access, so all energy resources are delivered by land routes from adjacent nations such as its western neighbor and Côte d'Ivoire.

Long queues have been forming around fuel outlets in Bamako in recent weeks, and the city's typically busy streets have now allegedly fallen quiet.

The ruling military council had previously reassured residents that it was only a short-term problem, but the emergency has persisted.

In the past few days, the United States diplomatic office in the capital stated that non-critical embassy personnel and their dependents would leave Mali amid the deteriorating fuel shortage and increasing security concerns.

It explained that the fuel disruptions had disrupted the supply of electricity and had the “ability to disturb” the broader protection environment in unforeseen manners.

The West African nation is presently governed by a military junta headed by General Goïta, who seized power in a coup in two years ago.

The junta had popular support when it assumed control, committing to tackle the protracted safety emergency prompted by a separatist rebellion in the northern region by the Tuareg population, which was then co-opted by extremist groups.

The international UN troops and European soldiers had been stationed in previously to deal with the growing rebellion.

The international troops have left since the military assumed power, and the military government has contracted foreign fighters to address the insecurity.

However, the Islamist rebellion has endured and extensive regions of the northern and eastern zones of the nation remain not under administrative command.