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Mali has suspended schools and universities across the nation due to a acute petrol shortage caused by a blockade on energy resources enforced by Islamist insurgents.

The Education Minister declared on state television that all education institutions would stay shut until the ninth of November, clarifying that the transportation of staff and students had been affected by the imposed limitations.

He emphasized that the government officials were “working tirelessly” to resolve the crisis so that educational activities could resume on 10 November.

For weeks, Mali has been experiencing a petrol crisis, especially in the main city, after armed groups from an al-Qaeda affiliate initiated a blockade by attacking tankers on major highways.

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

Lengthy waits have been forming around fuel outlets in the main city in the past few weeks, and the city's typically busy streets have now reportedly fallen quiet.

The military government had in recent days promised the public that it was only a short-term problem, but the situation has continued.

In the past few days, the United States diplomatic office in Bamako declared that non-essential diplomatic staff and their relatives would evacuate Mali amid the intensifying petrol scarcity and increasing security concerns.

It explained that the fuel disruptions had disrupted the power distribution and had the “capacity to affect” the general safety conditions in unforeseen manners.

The West African nation is presently governed by a military junta under the leadership of Gen Assimi Goïta, who seized power in a takeover in two years ago.

The ruling council had popular support when it came to authority, promising to deal with the protracted safety emergency triggered by a separatist rebellion in the north by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then co-opted by jihadist fighters.

The United Nations stabilization force and European soldiers had been deployed in previously to deal with the escalating insurgency.

Both have departed since the new administration came in, and the military government has contracted private military contractors to address the insecurity.

However, the militant uprising has continued and extensive regions of the northern and eastern zones of the state remain not under administrative command.