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The number of fatalities from a catastrophic structural failure at an educational institution in Indonesia escalated to 14 on Friday as emergency crews pulled several victims from beneath the rubble. Dozens of students are still missing and the number of casualties is expected to rise.

Search Operations Intensify as Hope Fades

At first, rescuers conducted manual searches for those trapped alive after the building collapsed on Monday. But with no more detections of survivors found by Thursday, they began using large machinery equipped with jackhammers to help them progress more rapidly.

Emergency workers worked in the hot sun on Friday to demolish and remove large slabs of debris, with the smell of the deceased a somber indication of what they would discover below.

By the evening, they had recovered nine victims, bringing the confirmed death toll to 14, with nearly 50 students still unaccounted for.

Details of the Collapse

The structure collapsed on top of hundreds of people on Monday in a worship area at the century-old Al Khoziny Islamic boarding school in Sidoarjo in East Java, about 780km (480 miles) to the east of Jakarta.

The chief of Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency, Suharyanto, informed reporters at the site on Friday that the retrieval operation were expected to be finished by the end of Saturday.

The students were primarily boys in grades seven to 12, between 12 and 19 years of age. Girls were praying in another part of the building and were able to get out safely, eyewitnesses said.

Eyewitness Testimony: Narrow Survival from the Debris

Thirteen-year-old Rizalul Qoib, one of 104 those who escaped, returned to the site on Friday to see what was remaining of his school, and said he was lucky to have gotten out with only a minor gash to his head.

He said, similar to his peers, he had been engaged in worship when he heard something similar to the sound of crumbling material, which got increasingly intense.

“I stopped praying and fled when I felt the floor trembling,” he recalled. “Suddenly the building gave way, the wreckage of the roof fell on my head, my face.”

Then the room went dark, but he heard someone yelling, “over here, follow me” and he followed the voice until he eventually found a small opening in the rubble.

“I just went toward the light,” Qoib said.

A significant number of the other individuals who were injured but got out or were saved experienced serious head trauma and broken bones, and are still being treated in the medical facility.

Reason of the Collapse

Authorities have stated the building was two storeys, but an additional two stories were being added without a permit. Law enforcement said the existing structure's base seemingly was unable to support the additional weight and failed during the pouring process.

School officials have so far declined to speak.