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Mali has temporarily halted educational facilities and higher learning institutions across the nation due to a severe fuel scarcity triggered by a restriction on petroleum supplies enforced by Islamist insurgents.

Minister of Education announced on national broadcast that all learning centers would be inactive until the ninth of November, explaining that the movement of personnel and pupils had been affected by the blockade.

He asserted that the administration were “working tirelessly” to end the situation so that academic sessions could continue on the tenth of November.

For several weeks, the nation has been experiencing a petrol crisis, notably in the main city, after militants from an al-Qaeda-linked organization enforced a embargo by striking tankers on major highways.

Mali is without coastal access, so all energy resources are transported by land routes from adjacent nations such as Senegal and Ivory Coast.

Long queues have been winding around petrol stations in the capital 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 residents that it was only a short-term problem, but the crisis has endured.

In the past few days, the United States diplomatic office in the capital announced that non-essential diplomatic staff and their relatives would evacuate Mali amid the worsening fuel shortage and increasing safety issues.

It said that the fuel disruptions had affected the energy availability and had the “ability to disturb” the overall security situation in unexpected forms.

Mali is presently governed by a armed forces administration headed by General Goïta, who assumed authority in a military overthrow in two years ago.

The military government had widespread approval when it came to authority, promising to deal with the long-running security crisis prompted by a independence uprising in the northern region by the Tuareg population, which was then taken over by extremist groups.

The international UN troops and France's military had been sent in a decade ago to address the increasing militant activity.

These forces have withdrawn since the junta took over, and the current administration has hired Russian mercenaries to combat the insecurity.

Nevertheless, the Islamist rebellion has endured and significant areas of the northern and eastern zones of the nation remain outside government control.