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Mali has suspended educational facilities and universities throughout the country due to a critical petrol shortage resulting from a blockade on fuel imports implemented by jihadist fighters.

Top education official announced on state television that all learning centers would stay shut until the ninth of November, explaining that the travel of staff and pupils had been affected by the restrictions.

He emphasized that the administration were “making every effort” to end the emergency so that academic sessions could continue on November 10th.

For a number of weeks, the nation has been experiencing a energy deficit, notably in the capital Bamako, after armed groups from an al-Qaeda affiliate initiated a restriction by striking transport vehicles on key routes.

Mali is landlocked, so all fuel supplies are delivered by truck from adjacent nations such as Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire.

Lengthy waits have been forming around gas pumps in the main city in the last several days, and the city's normally bustling streets have now apparently grown silent.

The junta-led administration had in recent days assured residents that it was only a temporary issue, but the emergency has continued.

In the past few days, the US Embassy in the capital declared that non-critical embassy personnel and their relatives would depart the country amid the deteriorating energy crisis and increasing protection worries.

It noted that the petroleum supply issues had disrupted the supply of electricity and had the “capacity to affect” the broader protection environment in unpredictable ways.

Mali is currently ruled by a military junta led by Gen Assimi Goïta, who seized power in a coup in two years ago.

The ruling council had public backing when it took power, promising to tackle the long-running security crisis triggered by a independence uprising in the northern territories by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then hijacked by Islamist militants.

The UN peacekeeping mission and European soldiers had been deployed in previously to deal with the increasing militant activity.

Both have withdrawn since the new administration came in, and the current administration has contracted foreign fighters to tackle the insecurity.

However, the jihadist insurgency has persisted and significant areas of the northern and eastern territories of the state remain beyond state authority.