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The landlocked West African country has suspended schools and colleges across the nation due to a severe petrol shortage resulting from a blockade on fuel imports imposed by Islamist insurgents.

Minister of Education announced on state television that all academic facilities would be inactive until the ninth of November, clarifying that the travel of personnel and students had been impacted by the imposed limitations.

He stated that the authorities were “making every effort” to end the situation so that educational activities could resume on November 10th.

For a number of weeks, Mali has been facing a fuel shortage, especially in the administrative center, after militants from an al-Qaeda-linked organization imposed a blockade by targeting tankers on key routes.

The country is without coastal access, so all petroleum products are brought in by truck from bordering countries such as its western neighbor and Côte d'Ivoire.

Long queues have been forming around gas pumps in the capital in the past few weeks, and the city's typically busy streets have now reportedly become deserted.

The ruling military council had previously reassured residents that it was only a temporary issue, but the situation has persisted.

Recently, the American diplomatic mission in Bamako announced that non-essential diplomatic staff and their dependents would leave the country amid the deteriorating energy crisis and growing safety issues.

It said that the petroleum supply issues had affected the power distribution and had the “potential to disrupt” the general safety conditions in unpredictable ways.

The West African nation is presently governed by a army council headed by General Goïta, who assumed authority in a coup in 2021.

The military government had popular support when it came to authority, vowing to tackle the protracted safety emergency caused by a autonomy movement in the northern territories by the Tuareg population, which was then co-opted by extremist groups.

The United Nations stabilization force and French forces had been stationed in previously to deal with the escalating insurgency.

Both have withdrawn since the new administration came in, and the military government has hired Russian mercenaries to address the violence.

Nonetheless, the militant uprising has persisted and large parts of the north and east of the nation remain beyond state authority.