On October 7, 2025, Indonesian rescuers ended their search for victims trapped under the collapsed Al Khoziny Islamic boarding school in East Java after authorities said 67 people had been found dead. The disaster mitigation agency called the collapse the year’s deadliest and said the operation was formally closed after crews cleared the debris and concluded it was very unlikely that more bodies would be found.
The final tally showed the scale of the disaster. Authorities said 171 victims had been evacuated in total, including 67 dead and 104 survivors. They also said eight body parts were recovered and were being identified by police. The search and rescue agency said the building had caved in on hundreds of mostly teenage boys during afternoon prayers, and that most of those present managed to escape.
The collapse has also become a political and regulatory issue. Police said two extra levels were being added to the two-storey building without a permit, leading to a structural failure. The public works ministry said just 50 of more than 42,000 pesantren nationwide had a building permit, a figure that has triggered anger over illegal construction and weak oversight.
Rescue teams used excavators and cranes to lift concrete slabs and searched through tunnels while calling out the names of victims they believed might still be alive. By Tuesday, Yudhi Bramantyo, the operations director, said all rubble had been cleared and the agency had no realistic expectation of finding more bodies. The closure of the search did not end the grief, but it did confirm the scale of the tragedy and the limits of what rescuers could still do.
The school’s caretaker, Abdus Salam Mujib, later offered a public apology in a rare appearance, saying the collapse was God’s will and asking families to be patient. The wording only sharpened debate over human responsibility, because the source report showed that the disaster was tied not to weather or earthquake but to construction work carried out on an unstable building. The result is a fatal reminder that in Indonesia, school safety, building permits and enforcement failures can become matters of life and death.
The permit issue makes the collapse a national scandal, not just a local tragedy. The public works ministry said only 50 of more than 42,000 pesantren have building permits, which suggests a regulatory failure that extends far beyond one school and into the way religious education buildings are overseen across Indonesia.
The recovery effort itself was a race against both time and grief. Crews used excavators, cranes and tunnel searches to recover bodies while families waited for answers, and the caretaker’s apology did little to settle the anger that a building was allowed to grow upward without the paperwork or technical supervision needed to keep it safe.
The fatal collapse is likely to sharpen pressure for inspections, permits and enforcement far beyond Sidoarjo. If the authorities do not act on the construction failures described in the report, the same combination of weak supervision and rushed expansion could threaten other schools built in similar conditions.
