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Mali has closed schools and higher learning institutions across the nation due to a critical energy crisis resulting from a blockade on fuel imports enforced by Islamist insurgents.

The Education Minister announced on public media that all education institutions would be inactive until November 9th, explaining that the movement of employees and students had been impacted by the blockade.

He emphasized that the administration were “working tirelessly” to resolve the crisis so that academic sessions could continue on the tenth of November.

For a number of weeks, Mali has been experiencing a fuel shortage, notably in the capital Bamako, after insurgents from an al-Qaeda affiliate imposed a blockade by attacking transport vehicles on key routes.

The country is without coastal access, so all petroleum products are transported by land routes from adjacent nations such as Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire.

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

The junta-led administration had in recent days promised the public that it was only a short-term problem, but the emergency has endured.

Recently, the American diplomatic mission in Bamako announced that non-critical embassy personnel and their dependents would evacuate Mali amid the deteriorating fuel shortage and escalating safety issues.

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

Mali is presently governed by a armed forces administration headed by the military leader, who assumed authority in a military overthrow in recently.

The ruling council had popular support when it took power, promising to deal with 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 increasing militant activity.

The international troops have left since the military assumed power, and the current administration has hired private military contractors to address the violence.

Nevertheless, the militant uprising has endured and significant areas of the north and east of the state remain not under administrative command.