Indonesian boarding school collapse kills 50, 13 still missing

At least 50 people have died following the collapse of a school in East Java, Indonesia, last week, officials have confirmed, in what has become the country’s deadliest disaster of 2025.

The Al Khoziny Islamic boarding school in Sidoarjo town caved in, burying hundreds of students, most of them teenage boys, under piles of concrete, Caliber.Az reports, citing foreign media.

Rescue teams have now cleared nearly all of the debris in their search for victims.

By late Sunday (October 5), around 80% of the rubble had been removed using excavators, with rescuers recovering bodies and body parts of the victims, the national disaster mitigation agency said.

Budi Irawan, a deputy at the agency, confirmed 50 fatalities based on the bodies recovered so far, adding that search teams were expected to continue looking for 13 more individuals trapped in the ruins.

"This is the deadliest single-building disaster this year," he said. "No other incident in 2025, natural or otherwise, has claimed as many lives as this one in Sidoarjo."

Yudhi Bramantyo, a search and rescue official, said the discovery of five additional body parts suggested the toll could rise to at least 54. Footage shared by authorities showed rescue workers carrying orange body bags from the site.

Preliminary investigations indicate that construction work on the upper floors may have caused the collapse, exceeding the structural capacity of the school’s foundations.

Indonesia has around 42,000 Islamic boarding schools, known as pesantren, but only 50 of these reportedly have formal building permits, according to the country’s public works minister, Dody Hanggodo. It remains unclear whether Al Khoziny was among them.

By Aghakazim Guliyev