School collapse death toll reaches 49 as search for missing students continues
By The Guardian, October 6, 2025Indonesian rescuers searching for missing students after a prayer hall at an Islamic boarding school collapsed last week recovered the bodies of dozens of students over the weekend, bringing the confirmed death toll to 49.
Using heavy excavators equipped with jackhammers, circular saws, and sometimes their bare hands, rescue teams removed tons of rubble in an attempt to find the 14 students reportedly still missing. Rescuers found 35 bodies over the weekend alone, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said.
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The structure fell on top of hundreds of students, mostly boys aged between 12 and 19, on September 29, 2025, at the century-old Al Khoziny school in Sidoarjo on the eastern side of Indonesia’s Java island. Of those rescued, 97 were treated for various injuries and released. Six others suffered serious injuries and remained hospitalised on Sunday, October 5, 2025.
Police say two levels were being added to the two-story building without a permit, leading to structural failure. This has triggered widespread anger over illegal construction in Indonesia.
Holy Abdullah Arif, 49, wept as he held up a picture on his mobile phone of his nephew Rosi, still listed among the missing. He described his frantic search for the boy in the ruins.
“I ran around screaming, ‘Rosi! Rosi! If you can hear me and can move, get out!’ And then a child was screaming back from the rubble, and he was stuck. I thought that was Rosi, so I asked, ‘Are you Rosi?’ and the child said, ‘God, no, help me!’”
Families clustered around a whiteboard with a list of the known survivors, searching for the names of their children.
An excavator and a crane had been deployed to help rescuers shift the rubble, but Nanang Sigit, a local search and rescue official, said authorities would not use heavy equipment for fear of causing the remaining structure to collapse.
“The rescuers are still searching for 91 people,” said Abdul Muhari, a spokesperson from the national disaster mitigation agency, telling Reuters that 26 of the injured were still being treated at local hospitals.
The agency said the building’s foundations may not have been able to support the weight of construction on its fourth floor.
The Antara state news agency quoted a school caretaker, Abdus Salam Mujib, as saying building work had ended for the day before the prayers, but the foundations could not support the construction that had taken place on the floors above.