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Mali has suspended educational facilities and colleges throughout the country due to a critical fuel scarcity triggered by a restriction on fuel imports imposed by jihadist fighters.

The Education Minister announced on state television that all education institutions would stay shut until the ninth of November, noting that the movement of employees and learners had been impacted by the imposed limitations.

He stated that the authorities were “doing everything possible” to alleviate the emergency so that educational activities could restart on the tenth of November.

For several weeks, Mali has been experiencing a energy deficit, especially in the administrative center, after militants from an jihadist network enforced a blockade by targeting fuel trucks on primary roads.

Mali is surrounded by land, so all fuel supplies are transported by road from bordering countries such as Senegal and the neighboring nation.

Extended lines have been forming around gas pumps in the main city in the last several days, and the city's typically busy streets have now apparently grown silent.

The military government had in recent days promised citizens that it was only a short-term problem, but the crisis has endured.

Recently, the United States diplomatic office in the capital stated that non-critical embassy personnel and their families would leave Mali amid the worsening energy crisis and increasing protection worries.

It said that the petroleum supply issues had disrupted the supply of electricity and had the “ability to disturb” the general safety conditions in unpredictable ways.

The West African nation is now led by a military junta led by the military leader, who took control in a takeover in two years ago.

The junta had public backing when it assumed control, promising to tackle the protracted safety emergency prompted by a independence uprising in the northern region by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then hijacked by extremist groups.

The United Nations stabilization force and European soldiers had been sent in a decade ago to address the escalating insurgency.

Both have withdrawn since the junta took over, and the ruling council has contracted Russian mercenaries to combat the violence.

However, the jihadist insurgency has persisted and significant areas of the northern and eastern territories of the nation remain beyond state authority.