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 reports that this is the country's deadliest disaster this year. Rescuers are expected to complete their search for the 13 victims trapped under the rubble by the end of the day.
Investigators are still determining the cause of the collapse, with preliminary accounts suggesting the two-storey building may have caved in due to an unstable foundation.
Budi Irawan, a deputy at the disaster mitigation agency, stated, Out of all the disasters in 2025, natural or not, there hasn't been as many dead victims as the ones in Sidoarjo. The toll includes at least two individuals who were rescued from the debris but succumbed to their injuries later.
Al Khoziny, a traditional Islamic boarding school known as a pesantren, may have violated building regulations, as many such schools operate informally without rigorous oversight. The construction work's legality remains uncertain.
The search and rescue operations are proving difficult due to the precarious nature of the collapse, which left only narrow spaces for workers to navigate.
Witnesses provided harrowing accounts of the disaster, with 13-year-old Muhammad Rijalul Qoib describing the terrifying moment the roof began to cave in, prompting him to escape as debris fell around him.
