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The landlocked West African country has temporarily halted schools and higher learning institutions countrywide due to a critical fuel scarcity resulting from a blockade on energy resources enforced by Islamist insurgents.

Top education official stated on national broadcast that all learning centers would remain closed until the ninth of November, noting that the travel of personnel and pupils had been affected by the blockade.

He emphasized that the authorities were “doing everything possible” to end the crisis so that classes could resume on the tenth of November.

For a number of weeks, the nation has been experiencing a energy deficit, especially in the administrative center, after insurgents from an al-Qaeda-linked organization initiated a embargo by attacking fuel trucks on major highways.

The country is landlocked, so all petroleum products are transported by land routes from bordering countries such as Senegal and Ivory Coast.

Long queues have been forming around gas pumps in Bamako in recent weeks, and the city's usually crowded streets have now apparently grown silent.

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

Recently, the American diplomatic mission in the capital declared that non-critical embassy personnel and their dependents would leave the country amid the intensifying energy crisis and increasing safety issues.

It said that the petroleum supply issues had affected the power distribution and had the “capacity to affect” the general safety conditions in unforeseen manners.

The West African nation is now led by a army council headed by the military leader, who seized power in a military overthrow in recently.

The junta had popular support when it took power, promising to deal with the long-running security crisis caused by a autonomy movement in the northern region by the Tuareg population, which was then hijacked by extremist groups.

The United Nations stabilization force and European soldiers had been stationed in a decade ago to deal with the escalating insurgency.

The international troops have departed since the military assumed power, and the ruling council has hired private military contractors to address the insecurity.

However, the jihadist insurgency has continued and extensive regions of the northern and eastern zones of the country remain beyond state authority.