Parents in Agony Amid Search for Children Trapped in Indonesia School Collapse

As the call to prayer rang out over the boarding school in Indonesia’s East Java on Monday afternoon, the floor beneath more than 100 students gathered in prostration suddenly gave way. So quickly were the four storeys of the Al Khoziny school flattened that a father who arrived soon after to search for his son could not even distinguish where the building had once stood. ‘We just saw dust everywhere,’ Aep Saeful said, his voice breaking. ‘There was no building. It was totally buried in the ground. I heard children screaming for help but we couldn’t do anything.’ With at least eight people dead and 59 still missing, mostly young male students, parents like Saeful find themselves in an excruciating limbo, caught between anger and grief. ‘What are our children’s sins to deserve this?’ Saeful said, bursting into tears.