with dozens of students still unaccounted for and the death toll expected to rise. Rescuers had been initially working by hand after the building being renovated caved in Monday as they searched for survivors. But with no more signs of life detected by Thursday they turned to heavy excavators equipped with jackhammers to help them progress more rapidly. By evening on Friday they had found five bodies, bringing the confirmed death toll to 10, with more than 50 students still unaccounted for. The structure fell on top of hundreds of people in a prayer hall at the century-old al Khoziny Islamic boarding school in Sidoarjo on the eastern side of Indonesia’s Java island.

The students were mostly boys in grades seven to 12, between the ages of 12 and 19. Female students were praying in another part of the building and managed to escape, survivors said. Thirteen-year-old Rizalul Qoib, one of 105 survivors, returned to the scene on Friday to look at what was left of his school, and said he was lucky to have got out with only a minor gash to his head. He said, like the others, he had been praying when he heard something like the sound of falling rocks, which got louder and louder. (Jamaica Gleaner)