Rescue teams in Indonesia pulled five teenage boys alive from the wreckage of a collapsed Islamic boarding school on Wednesday.
This offered a fleeting moment of relief in an otherwise grim operation.
The Al Khoziny Islamic Boarding School in Sidoarjo, East Java, collapsed on Monday during afternoon prayers. It trapped dozens of students under tons of concrete and corrugated iron.
Authorities reported moderate injuries for the survivors, who were hospitalized.
The death toll stands at five, with 59 students still missing as of Thursday morning.
The disaster struck when the building’s foundations failed under the weight of ongoing construction work on upper floors.
Many of the boys, aged 12 to 18 and from lower-income families, were in the prayer hall at the time.
Rescuers, clad in orange uniforms, have tunneled painstakingly through narrow 60-centimeter-wide passages.
They supplied oxygen, food, and water to trapped students.
Thermal cameras and motion detectors aided the search overnight.
No further signs of life were detected by Thursday.
As the fourth day of operations unfolded, teams faced mounting challenges.
An earthquake in nearby Sumenep on Tuesday may have compacted the debris further. This complicated manual extractions.
Initially, heavy machinery like excavators and cranes was withheld to avoid destabilizing the structure. A crane was deployed Thursday to remove lighter rubble.
Yudhi Bramantyo, operations director at Indonesia’s national search and rescue agency, Basarnas, noted that all victims who communicated with rescuers had been evacuated from two sectors.
The number of missing was revised down to 59 from 91, based on school attendance lists and family reports.
Among the seven boys extracted Wednesday from one pocket of rubble, two were found dead.
The final survivor, 13-year-old Saiful Rozi, emerged stable at 8:20 p.m. local time. Officials plan to consult families on shifting to recovery mode.
This could involve using heavier equipment that might end chances for additional live rescues. Hundreds of anxious relatives have gathered near the site. They scanned lists of survivors pinned to notice boards.
Dwi Ajeng Tyasusanti, mother of rescued 13-year-old Syailendra Haikal, expressed her faith during the ordeal.
Umi Kulsum, 37, whose 15-year-old son Sulaiman Hadi remains missing, traveled from Jakarta to plead for continued searches. He was in his third year at the madrasah tsanawiyah secondary school. He had last spoken to her three days before the collapse, sounding content despite the distance.
Ahmad Ikhsan, 52, waits for news of his 14-year-old son Arif Affandi, insisting on his belief in survival.
The Al Khoziny school is one of approximately 42,000 pesantrens across Indonesia. These serve 7 million students in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.
As despair deepens, Bramantyo urged focus: “We can’t let our minds wander. Maybe there is still hope for our little brothers.”