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Mali has suspended educational facilities and higher learning institutions across the nation due to a severe petrol shortage caused by a embargo on petroleum supplies implemented by jihadist fighters.

The Education Minister announced on national broadcast that all learning centers would be inactive until November 9th, noting that the travel of staff and learners had been affected by the blockade.

He asserted that the administration were “doing everything possible” to alleviate the emergency so that classes could restart on 10 November.

For weeks, the nation has been grappling with a fuel shortage, notably in the capital Bamako, after insurgents from an al-Qaeda affiliate initiated a blockade by targeting fuel trucks on key routes.

The country is landlocked, so all energy resources are brought in by land routes from adjacent nations such as its western neighbor and Ivory Coast.

Long queues have been snaking around petrol stations in the capital in the last several days, and the city's usually crowded streets have now allegedly fallen quiet.

The junta-led administration had earlier this month assured citizens that it was only a passing concern, but the emergency has continued.

In the past few days, the US Embassy in the capital announced that non-critical embassy personnel and their dependents would evacuate the country amid the deteriorating petrol scarcity and increasing safety issues.

It said that the fuel disruptions had affected the power distribution and had the “ability to disturb” the general safety conditions in unforeseen manners.

Mali is presently governed by a military junta led by the military leader, who took control in a military overthrow in two years ago.

The ruling council had popular support when it took power, committing to tackle the protracted safety emergency prompted by a separatist rebellion in the north by Tuareg communities, which was then hijacked by jihadist fighters.

The UN peacekeeping mission and French forces had been sent in a decade ago to deal with the increasing militant activity.

Both have left since the new administration came in, and the military government has employed foreign fighters to tackle the insecurity.

Nevertheless, the Islamist rebellion has endured and extensive regions of the northern and eastern territories of the state remain beyond state authority.