Indonesia has halted the search for bodies at a collapsed Islamic boarding school after retrieving more than 60, officials said.
The National Search and Rescue Agency announced on Tuesday that the teams were stepping down after more than a week of efforts to recover victims trapped beneath the rubble at the al-Khoziny school.
Parts of the school in the town of Sidoarjo, East Java, caved in on September 29 while the students were at afternoon prayers.
“Entering the 9th day, we have concluded the search and rescue operation for the victims,” the head of the rescue agency (Basarnas), Mohammad Syafii, told a news conference.
He said the authorities have cleared all the debris from the site and determined no further bodies would be found.
The bodies of at least 61 people in the building have been found, as well as seven body parts, the agency said. Other unconfirmed reports suggest as many as 67 people died.
Of the bodies recovered from the site, only 17 have been identified so far, according to the police’s Disaster Victim Identification unit.
Severed limbs are among the body parts discovered, said Budi Irawan, deputy chief of the National Disaster Agency.
More than 100 people survived the disaster, the agency’s operations director, Yudhi Bramantyo, said.
The school collapse was Indonesia’s deadliest disaster so far this year, according to the National Disaster Agency.
Frantic search
The rescue effort involved responders digging tunnels and calling out to the missing in a bid to find survivors. There were some remarkable successes. Thirteen-year-old Selendra Haikal Rakaditya was pulled out on a stretcher 72 hours after the disaster.
The end of the operation followed a decision by families of the missing on Thursday to allow heavy machinery to be used to clear rubble from the site and recover bodies.
That decision was made after the 72-hour “golden period” for the best chance of survival came to an end.
Cause under investigation
Investigators have been examining the cause of the collapse. According to experts, initial indications suggest that substandard construction was a factor.
Work on an unauthorised extension of the school had been taking place for weeks, according to reports, with builders pouring concrete on two upper floors.
Poor construction standards have raised widespread concerns about building safety in Indonesia.
Al-Khoziny is one of more than 42,000 traditional Islamic boarding schools, known as pesantren, in Indonesia, only 50 of which have a building permit, according to the Ministry of Public Works.
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