**Death Toll Rises to 36 in Indonesian School Collapse** The death toll from the collapse of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia has increased to 36, according to the country's disaster mitigation agency. The agency reported on Sunday that efforts are ongoing to locate 27 students who remain missing, most of whom are teenage boys aged 13 to 19. Rescue operations have now transitioned into a recovery phase after a week of searching for survivors. Cranes have been brought in to help clear debris, and the agency indicated that search and evacuation efforts are approximately 60 percent complete. They expect to finish clearing the site and conclude the search by Monday. The Al Khoziny school, located in Sidoarjo, East Java province, collapsed last Monday during afternoon prayers. The building's foundations were unable to support ongoing construction work on its upper floors, leading to the tragic incident that trapped hundreds of students. On Friday, rescuers received permission from the parents of the missing students to use heavy machinery after previous attempts to locate survivors yielded no results. Rescuers have been digging through tunnels in the rubble, calling out the names of the boys and using sensors to detect any signs of life, but so far, they have found none. Al Khoziny is classified as a pesantren, a type of Islamic boarding school. Indonesia, the largest Muslim-majority country in the world, has around 42,000 pesantren serving approximately seven million students, according to data from the religious affairs ministry.
Death Toll Rises to 36 in Indonesian School Collapse

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