No signs of life': Hopes turn to anguish in Indonesia school collapse

"Hopes for dozens of students feared trapped in rubble at a collapsed boarding school have turned to anguish as authorities shift their focus from rescue to recovery. Suharyanto, the head of Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency, told a news conference on Thursday that thermal drones and other equipment had found no additional signs of life at Al-Khoziny Islamic Boarding School."

"Relatives of the missing students collapsed in the streets around the site and wailed in anguish upon hearing the news. Authorities said they would bring in heavy machinery to assist in recovery efforts. Until now, they had resisted bringing in excavators to clear the debris for fear of harming anyone trapped alive. Authorities have sealed off the school, which officials say collapsed as construction workers were laying concrete on the building's fourth floor,"

"But even hundreds of metres from the scene, the smell of decomposing bodies was overwhelming. Police tape around the site of the school collapse in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia, on October 2, 2025 [Aisyah Llewellyn/Al Jazeera] The missing are all dead, said a junior police officer standing guard at the scene, asking not to be named. He said it had long been suspected that most of the students trapped inside the school had perished."

Rescue operations at Al-Khoziny Islamic Boarding School shifted to recovery after search teams using thermal drones and other equipment detected no additional signs of life. The building collapsed while construction workers were laying concrete on the fourth floor, leaving 59 people believed missing. Authorities initially avoided excavators to reduce risk to survivors but plan to bring heavy machinery to clear debris. Relatives collapsed and wailed at the scene, and many have been sleeping there since the collapse. Family members lined up to provide DNA samples for identification. A junior police officer at the site said most of the trapped students were suspected to have perished.

Read at www.aljazeera.com