Death toll from Indonesian school collapse rises to 14 as crews pull
more bodies from rubble
[October 04, 2025]
By NINIEK KARMINI and DAVID RISING
SIDOARJO, Indonesia (AP) — The death toll from a school collapse in
Indonesia rose to 14 on Friday after recovery crews pulled multiple
bodies from beneath the rubble. Dozens of students remain unaccounted
for and the death toll is expected to rise.
Rescuers initially searched by hand for survivors after the building
caved in Monday. But with no more signs of life detected by Thursday
they turned to heavy excavators equipped with jackhammers to help them
progress more rapidly.
By Friday evening, they had found nine bodies, bringing the confirmed
death toll to 14, with nearly 50 students still unaccounted for.
The structure fell on top of hundreds of people on Monday in a prayer
hall at the century-old al Khoziny Islamic boarding school in Sidoarjo
on the eastern side of Indonesia’s Java island.
Two of the bodies found Friday were in the prayer hall area and one was
found closer to an exit as if he had been attempting to escape,
according to Suharyanto, the head of Indonesia’s National Disaster
Mitigation Agency, who goes by one name as is common in Indonesia.
The students were mostly boys in grades seven to 12, between the ages of
12 and 19. Female students were praying in another part of the building
and managed to escape, survivors said.
Thirteen-year-old Rizalul Qoib, one of 104 survivors, returned to the
scene on Friday to look at what was left of his school, and said he was
lucky to have gotten out with only a minor gash to his head.
He said, like the others, he had been praying when he heard something
like the sound of falling rocks, which got louder and louder.
“I stopped praying and fled when I felt the floor shaking,” he recalled.
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Rescuers gather outside the islamic boarding school where a building
collapsed as the search for missing people is underway in Sidoarjo,
East Java, Indonesia, Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Achmad
Ibrahim)
“Suddenly the building collapsed, the debris of the roof fell on my
head, my face.”
Then the room went dark, but he heard someone shouting “this way,
this way” and he followed the voice until he eventually found a
narrow gap in the rubble.
“I just followed the light,” he said.
Many of the others who were injured but escaped or were rescued
suffered serious head trauma and broken bones and are still being
treated in the hospital.
Authorities have said the building was two stories, but two more
levels were being added without a permit. Police said the old
building’s foundation apparently was unable to support two floors of
concrete and collapsed during the pouring process.
School officials have not yet commented.
Crews worked in the hot sun Friday to break up and remove large
slabs of concrete, with the smell of decomposing bodies as a grim
reminder of what they would find underneath.
Suharyanto, of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, told
reporters at the scene on Friday that the recovery efforts were
expected to be complete by the end of Saturday.
___
Rising reported from Bangkok.
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