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Mali has closed schools and colleges countrywide due to a critical fuel scarcity resulting from a embargo on petroleum supplies enforced by jihadist fighters.

Top education official announced on state television that all education institutions would be inactive until 9 November, noting that the transportation of staff and pupils had been affected by the blockade.

He stated that the government officials were “making every effort” to resolve the emergency so that classes could continue on 10 November.

For weeks, Mali has been facing a energy deficit, especially in the main city, after armed groups from an jihadist network initiated a restriction by targeting transport vehicles on primary roads.

Mali is without coastal access, so all petroleum products are delivered by land routes from neighboring states such as its western neighbor and the neighboring nation.

Lengthy waits have been forming around petrol stations in Bamako in recent weeks, and the city's usually crowded streets have now apparently fallen quiet.

The junta-led administration had previously reassured residents that it was only a short-term problem, but the crisis has continued.

In the past few days, the US Embassy in the capital stated that non-critical embassy personnel and their families would evacuate Mali amid the intensifying fuel shortage and increasing protection worries.

It noted that the energy interruptions had disrupted the power distribution and had the “capacity to affect” the broader protection environment in unpredictable ways.

The West African nation is now led by a army council headed by Gen Assimi Goïta, who took control in a military overthrow in two years ago.

The junta had popular support when it assumed control, vowing to address the ongoing instability prompted by a autonomy movement in the northern territories by Tuareg communities, which was then co-opted by extremist groups.

The international UN troops and European soldiers had been deployed in a decade ago to address the escalating insurgency.

The international troops have left since the new administration came in, and the current administration has contracted Russian mercenaries to combat the violence.

Nevertheless, the militant uprising has continued and extensive regions of the northern and eastern zones of the state remain beyond state authority.