Indonesian rescuers were racing on Tuesday to find 38 people feared trapped beneath the rubble of an Islamic boarding school that collapsed in East Java during afternoon prayers, killing three, according to disaster officials.
Three people were confirmed dead and 99 others survived Monday's collapse at the Al Khoziny boarding school in Sidoarjo, a town about 780 km (480 miles) east of Jakarta, according to Mohammad Syafii, head of Indonesia's search and rescue agency.
Earlier on Tuesday, disaster mitigation agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said the unstable building collapsed during construction.
"This sudden occurrence caused building material to fall on dozens of students and workers," he said.
An excavator and a crane were among the heavy equipment Syafii said searchers were using to shift the rubble.
Nanang Sigit, a local search and rescue official, said 38 people remained missing and authorities would not use heavy equipment for fear of causing the remaining structure to collapse.
Abdul said nearly 80 of the injured were taken to hospital.
Video images from news channel KompasTV showed families of students clustered around a whiteboard looking at a list of survivors.
The disaster mitigation agency said the building's foundations allegedly could not support the weight of construction on its fourth floor.
Al Khoziny caretaker Abdus Salam Mujib was quoted by state news agency Antara as saying building work had ended before the prayers but said the foundations could not support the construction.
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An Israeli strike on a four-storey residential building has killed at least four people and wounded six others in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek with rescue teams working to pull families from beneath the rubble, state news agency NNA said on Wednesday.
Kazakhstan has vowed to speed up its investigation into the Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) crash near Aktau, as mounting diplomatic pressure and geopolitical tensions push the disaster further into the international spotlight.
The Kremlin is utilising the recent United States and Israeli military strikes on Iran to validate its ongoing war in Ukraine. Russian officials are pointing to the escalation in the Middle East as evidence that Western nations do not adhere to international rules.
Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant Saudi Aramco closed its Ras Tanura refinery on Monday following an Iranian drone strike, an industry source told Reuters as Tehran retaliated across the Gulf after a U.S.-Israeli attack on Iranian targets over the weekend.
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The United Nations has called for an investigation into a deadly attack on a girls’ primary school in Iran, which Iranian officials say has killed more than 100 children. The U.S. has said its forces “would not” deliberately target a school.
U.S. first lady, Melania Trump chaired a UN Security Council meeting on children and education in conflict on Monday (2 March), a move criticised by Iran as hypocritical following U.S. and Israeli strikes that triggered a UN warning about risks to children.
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