The death toll from the collapse of a school in Indonesia last week has climbed to 54 people as rescuers have cleared nearly all of the debris, rescue authorities said on Monday, in the country’s deadliest disaster this year.
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Piles of concrete caved in on hundreds of mostly teenage boys after the collapse of the Al Khoziny Islamic Boarding School in the Indonesian town of Sidoarjo, in East Java province, trapping and later killing them.
Using excavators, rescuers late on Sunday cleared 80 per cent of the debris and found bodies and body parts of the mostly teenage victims, the disaster mitigation agency said in a statement.
Budi Irawan, a deputy at the disaster mitigation agency, said a total of 50 people have died based on the bodies recovered.
Rescuers were expected to finish their search by the end of Monday for 13 more trapped victims, he added.
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“The number of victims is the biggest this year from one building,” he told a press conference. “Out of all the disasters in 2025, natural or not, there hasn’t been as many dead victims as the ones in Sidoarjo.”