Indonesian authorities have concluded the search for victims trapped under the debris of a collapsed Islamic boarding school in East Java. Over 60 bodies have been recovered from the site where the Al Khoziny school collapsed due to structural failures, causing grief and confusion in the town of Sidoarjo. Most of the individuals, primarily teenage boys, managed to escape during the incident.
The disaster mitigation agency confirmed that all 61 people who were inside the building at the time of the collapse have been accounted for, along with the discovery of seven body parts that are undergoing identification processes by the police. The search operation, deemed the deadliest of the year, has been officially ended as the rescue teams, led by Mohammad Syafii, have cleared the debris from the collapse site.
Budi Irawan, the deputy chief of the agency, mentioned that among the identified parts are severed limbs. Rescuers utilized excavators and cranes to remove large concrete chunks, while also creating tunnels to search for potential survivors by calling out their names.
Al Khoziny is just one of thousands of similar Islamic boarding schools, known as pesantren, across Indonesia. Reports suggest that out of the 42,000 such schools, only a small fraction, including 50, possess the necessary building permits according to the public works ministry. It remains unclear if Al Khoziny had the required permit, as media outlets cited Sidoarjo chief Subandi stating that the school possibly operated without one.
