Jakarta, Indonesia – The number of students confirmed dead after a school building collapsed last week has risen to at least 54, Indonesia’s disaster response authority said Monday.
This came after rescue teams removed most of the rubble, in the worst disaster the country has witnessed this year.
Director of Operations at the National Search and Rescue Agency, Yudhi Bramantyo, said in a press conference that as of Monday morning, “we had recovered 54 bodies, including the remains of 5 people”.
Rescue workers are still working around the clock to find the missing.
“We hope to be able to complete the search operations today (Monday) and hand over the bodies” to the families, Yudhi said.
For his part, Deputy Director of the National Disaster Management Agency, Budi Irawan, said that the collapse was the deadliest disaster in Indonesia so far this year.
He added that at least 13 people are still missing.
Piles of concrete fell on hundreds of students, most of them boys between the ages of 13 and 19, after the collapse of the Al-Khuzini Islamic Boarding School building in the town of Sidwarjo, East Java Province, leading to their siege and then death.
Earlier, the authority said in a statement that rescue teams were able, using cranes, to remove 80 percent of the rubble and found the bodies and remains of victims.
Bodhi Erawan, deputy of the Disaster Response Authority, said that 50 people died, based on the bodies recovered, and that rescuers are expected to complete searches by the end of the day for 13 other victims.
Authorities said the school’s foundations could not withstand ongoing construction work on the upper floors, causing the collapse.
