🔗 Share this article

Mali has suspended educational facilities and colleges across the nation due to a critical petrol shortage resulting from a restriction on energy resources enforced by Islamist insurgents.

Top education official declared on state television that all education institutions would be inactive until November 9th, noting that the travel of employees and students had been disrupted by the blockade.

He asserted that the government officials were “doing everything possible” to end the situation so that educational activities could restart on 10 November.

For several weeks, Mali has been facing a energy deficit, notably in the main city, after insurgents from an al-Qaeda-linked organization initiated a blockade by targeting tankers on major highways.

Mali is without coastal access, so all fuel supplies are brought in by truck from neighboring states such as its western neighbor and Ivory Coast.

Extended lines have been forming around petrol stations in Bamako in the past few weeks, and the city's usually crowded streets have now allegedly fallen quiet.

The military government had in recent days assured residents that it was only a temporary issue, but the situation has persisted.

Last week, the US Embassy in Bamako declared that secondary diplomatic employees and their families would leave Mali amid the intensifying fuel shortage and growing security concerns.

It said that the fuel disruptions had impacted the energy availability and had the “potential to disrupt” the broader protection environment in unforeseen manners.

Mali is presently governed by a army council headed by General Goïta, who took control in a military overthrow in two years ago.

The junta had public backing when it came to authority, promising to deal with the long-running security crisis prompted by a separatist rebellion in the north by the Tuareg population, which was then taken over by extremist groups.

The UN peacekeeping mission and France's military had been sent in previously to combat the escalating insurgency.

Both have withdrawn since the military assumed power, and the military government has hired Russian mercenaries to address the insecurity.

However, the Islamist rebellion has persisted and extensive regions of the northern and eastern territories of the nation remain not under administrative command.