‘Perhaps There’s Still Hope’: Indonesian Rescuers Race Against Time to Save Students Trapped Under Collapsed School

Rescue teams in Indonesia were racing against time on Thursday to reach nearly 60 teenagers trapped beneath the rubble of an Islamic boarding school that collapsed earlier this week after its foundation gave way, disaster officials said.

The Al Khozinie school in Sidoarjo, East Java—about 480 miles east of the capital Jakarta—collapsed when its foundations failed to support ongoing construction work on the upper floors. Dozens of students were praying inside when the building gave way, burying them under the debris.

Based on the school’s attendance records and missing-person reports filed by families, 59 people remain trapped, said disaster mitigation agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari in a statement on Thursday.

Despite calling out victims’ names and using scanners and motion detectors to detect movement or vital signs, rescuers reported finding no signs of life as of Thursday, according to search-and-rescue official Amy Freezer, who spoke to Reuters.

Photos released by the agency showed rescue workers in their distinctive orange uniforms crawling through narrow passageways in the rubble in search of survivors.

The official death toll from the collapse remains unclear. On Wednesday night, operations director Yudhi Bramantyo said six people had died, while the national disaster agency maintained on Thursday that the figure was still five.

“We cannot let our minds drift,” Bramantyo said. “Perhaps there’s still hope for our younger brothers.”

Freezer added that a crane had been deployed Thursday to remove loose, unstable debris.

Al Khozinie is one of Indonesia’s Islamic boarding schools, locally known as pesantren. According to the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation is home to around 42,000 such schools, serving some 7 million students.

Among those waiting anxiously near a whiteboard listing survivors was 52-year-old Ahmad Ikhsan, still holding onto hope for his 14-year-old son, Arif Afandi.

“So far, I have heard nothing about my son,” he said. “But I believe he is still alive.”