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The landlocked West African country has closed educational facilities and higher learning institutions across the nation due to a critical petrol shortage triggered by a blockade on fuel imports imposed by militant groups.

Minister of Education stated on state television that all education institutions would be inactive until November 9th, explaining that the movement of employees and pupils had been affected by the blockade.

He emphasized that the government officials were “working tirelessly” to end the emergency so that academic sessions could restart on the tenth of November.

For a number of weeks, Mali has been experiencing a energy deficit, especially in the administrative center, after armed groups from an al-Qaeda affiliate enforced a blockade by attacking tankers on major highways.

Mali is without coastal access, so all fuel supplies are brought in by road from neighboring states such as its western neighbor and the neighboring nation.

Lengthy waits have been snaking around fuel outlets in the capital in the past few weeks, and the city's normally bustling streets have now reportedly fallen quiet.

The junta-led administration had earlier this month promised citizens that it was only a short-term problem, but the crisis has persisted.

In the past few days, the United States diplomatic office in the capital declared that non-critical embassy personnel and their relatives would depart the country amid the deteriorating petrol scarcity and growing protection worries.

It said that the energy interruptions had affected the supply of electricity and had the “capacity to affect” the overall security situation in unpredictable ways.

The West African nation is now led by a armed forces administration led by General Goïta, who seized power in a military overthrow in two years ago.

The junta had widespread approval when it assumed control, vowing to tackle the protracted safety emergency prompted by a separatist rebellion in the northern region by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then hijacked by jihadist fighters.

The international UN troops and European soldiers had been sent in a decade ago to address the growing rebellion.

Both have withdrawn since the new administration came in, and the ruling council has hired private military contractors to tackle the instability.

Nonetheless, the jihadist insurgency has endured and large parts of the northern and eastern territories of the nation remain beyond state authority.