At least three dead and dozens trapped after Indonesia school collapses _ BBC News

BBC NEWS

At least three people have been killed and 99 others taken to hospital, some of them with critical injuries, after a school building collapsed in East Java, Indonesia.   Officials said on Tuesday that the death toll may rise.   Others, many of them teenage boys remain trapped under the Al Khoziny Islamic Boarding School in the East Java town of Sidoarjo.    The two-storey building had an unstable foundation and could not support the weight of the construction of two more floors, the disaster mitigation agency said.   The girls were praying in another part of the building and managed to escape, according to the Associated Press.

Transcript

00:00Rescuers in Indonesia are trying to free children from the rubble of a school building which collapsed in East Java.

00:06At least 38 others remain trapped following yesterday's accident in the town of Sido Ajo.

00:12Three students are known to have died and 99 were taken to hospital after the building gave way.

00:17From Bangkok, here's the BBC's Jonathan Head.

00:22Rescuers fought for a second day to reach trapped students in a tangled mess of concrete.

00:27All that's left of what was a three-storey building onto which they were apparently adding a fourth floor when it collapsed.

00:37They're moving painfully slowly through the narrow spaces left when the heavy floors pancaked on top of each other.

00:46They believe there are still boys alive in here.

00:48Our target today was to reach one victim who could actually shout to us, said the search and rescue team leader.

00:59But we must prioritise safety.

01:01The unstable rubble could collapse again onto us or the survivors.

01:05Nearly 100 students were pulled out alive from the school and taken to hospital for treatment, but nearly 40 are still unaccounted for.

01:18Their families are waiting nearby for any news, good or bad.

01:22Holi Abdullah Arif rushed to the school when he heard about the disaster to look for his 13-year-old nephew, Rossi.

01:32I searched all day for him, he said, until I was crying.

01:36I just don't know if he can be rescued or even whether he's alive or dead.

01:41Islamic boarding schools like this play an important role in communities in this part of Indonesia,

01:46where many boys get their education.

01:50This one dates back more than a century.

01:53Now questions must be asked about how safely they are run.

01:58Jonathan Head, BBC News, Bangkok.

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