The death toll from the collapse of a school in Indonesia has risen to 54, authorities said, with rescuers still searching for more than a dozen missing people.
Hundreds of students, most of them teenage boys, had gathered for prayers at the Al Khoziny Islamic boarding school in East Java when it collapsed last Monday while undergoing construction.
Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency states this incident is the country's deadliest disaster this year. Rescuers are expected to complete their search for 13 victims trapped under the rubble by the end of the day.
Investigators are looking into the cause of the collapse, with several officials suggesting the two-storey building collapsed due to an unstable foundation.
Budi Irawan, a deputy at the disaster mitigation agency, remarked, Out of all the disasters in 2025, natural or not, there haven't been so many fatalities as in Sidoarjo. The toll includes at least two individuals who were rescued from the debris but later succumbed to their injuries in the hospital.
The Al Khoziny school, a traditional Islamic boarding school, is one of many pesantren that often operate informally without strong regulatory oversight. It's unclear whether the school had obtained the necessary permits for construction.
Search and rescue efforts are faced with challenges, as the building collapsed in a manner that left only narrow voids for rescuers to work through. Survivors have recounted their harrowing experiences, such as 13-year-old Muhammad Rijalul Qoib, who heard the noise of falling rocks and managed to escape just in time, albeit while being injured by falling debris.
