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The landlocked West African country has suspended schools and higher learning institutions countrywide due to a severe petrol shortage triggered by a embargo on fuel imports enforced by Islamist insurgents.

Top education official announced on public media that all learning centers would stay shut until 9 November, explaining that the movement of staff and students had been disrupted by the restrictions.

He stated that the government officials were “doing everything possible” to alleviate the crisis so that academic sessions could continue on November 10th.

For a number of weeks, Mali has been facing a petrol crisis, notably in the administrative center, after militants from an jihadist network initiated a embargo by attacking transport vehicles on primary roads.

The country is landlocked, so all fuel supplies are delivered by land routes from adjacent nations such as its western neighbor and Côte d'Ivoire.

Extended lines have been forming around fuel outlets in Bamako in the last several days, and the city's usually crowded streets have now apparently grown silent.

The ruling military council had earlier this month assured citizens that it was only a temporary issue, but the emergency has endured.

In the past few days, the United States diplomatic office in Bamako stated that non-critical embassy personnel and their dependents would evacuate Mali amid the deteriorating petrol scarcity and increasing security concerns.

It explained that the petroleum supply issues had disrupted the power distribution and had the “capacity to affect” the broader protection environment in unforeseen manners.

The West African nation is currently ruled by a military junta under the leadership of Gen Assimi Goïta, who took control in a takeover in 2021.

The junta had widespread approval when it took power, promising to tackle the protracted safety emergency prompted by a separatist rebellion in the north by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then taken over by jihadist fighters.

The United Nations stabilization force and French forces had been deployed in a decade ago to address the growing rebellion.

The international troops have withdrawn since the military assumed power, and the current administration has contracted Russian mercenaries to combat the insecurity.

Nevertheless, the Islamist rebellion has persisted and large parts of the north and east of the country remain beyond state authority.