Indonesian school collapse death toll hits 54 with 80% of debris cleared

Rescuers are expected to finish their search by the end of Monday for 13 more trapped victims

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Police officers carry the coffin of a student killed in the building collapse at the Al Khoziny Islamic Boarding School on Sunday. Photo: AFP

Published: 11:44am, 6 Oct 2025Updated: 11:45am, 6 Oct 2025

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.

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.

Relatives of a missing student cry on seeing their childs body in the morgue at Bhayangkara Hospital in Surabaya, East Java, on Sunday. Photo: AFP

Rescuers were expected to finish their search by the end of Monday for 13 more trapped victims, he added.

“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.”

Indonesian school collapse death toll hits 54 with 80% of debris cleared

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Rescuers are expected to finish their search by the end of Monday for 13 more trapped victims

Rescuers are expected to finish their search by the end of Monday for 13 more trapped victims