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Mali has closed schools and universities countrywide due to a acute fuel scarcity triggered by a blockade on petroleum supplies enforced by Islamist insurgents.

The Education Minister announced on public media that all academic facilities would stay shut until 9 November, clarifying that the transportation of employees and learners had been affected by the restrictions.

He stated that the authorities were “making every effort” to alleviate the situation so that academic sessions could restart on 10 November.

For a number of weeks, Mali has been experiencing a energy deficit, particularly in the main city, after armed groups from an al-Qaeda-linked organization enforced a restriction by striking tankers on primary roads.

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

Long queues have been forming around gas pumps in Bamako in recent weeks, and the city's usually crowded streets have now allegedly become deserted.

The ruling military council had previously promised citizens that it was only a short-term problem, but the crisis has persisted.

Last week, the US Embassy in Bamako announced that non-critical embassy personnel and their dependents would depart Mali amid the deteriorating energy crisis and growing safety issues.

It said that the energy interruptions had impacted the supply of electricity and had the “ability to disturb” the general safety conditions in unpredictable ways.

The West African nation is presently governed by a army council under the leadership of the military leader, 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 independence uprising in the north by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then hijacked by Islamist militants.

The international UN troops and French forces had been deployed in 2013 to combat the escalating insurgency.

Both have left since the new administration came in, and the ruling council has hired foreign fighters to address the insecurity.

However, the jihadist insurgency has endured and extensive regions of the northern and eastern zones of the nation remain beyond state authority.