Rescuers in Indonesia were racing against time on Thursday to save dozens of students believed to be trapped beneath the rubble of an Islamic boarding school that collapsed earlier this week in East Java.
The Al Khoziny pesantren, located in the town of Sidoarjo about 480 miles east of Jakarta, gave way when its foundations failed to withstand ongoing construction work on the upper floors.
The collapse buried students who had been praying at the time, authorities said.
According to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, 59 people remain missing based on the school’s attendance records and family reports. At least five people have been confirmed dead, though search and rescue officials on Wednesday put the death toll at six.
“Rescuers are still calling out the names of those missing to detect signs of life,” said Nanang Sigit, an official with the country’s search and rescue agency. “The results of this assessment will guide our next steps.”
Photographs released by the agency showed rescuers in orange uniforms crawling through narrow tunnels of rubble. Heavy machinery, including an excavator and a crane, has been deployed to the site, but disaster officials have restricted their use for fear of triggering a secondary collapse.
“We can’t let our minds wander. Maybe there is still hope for our little brothers,” said operations director Yudhi Bramantyo, as teams worked into the night.
The tragedy has drawn attention to the safety of pesantren, Islamic boarding schools that play a central role in Indonesian education.
The world’s largest Muslim-majority nation has about 42,000 such institutions serving nearly 7 million students, according to the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
Source: Reuters
Written By Rodney Mbua
