Jakarta. Nine bodies recovered from the collapsed prayer hall at Al-Khoziny Islamic boarding school in Sidoarjo, East Java, have yet to be identified as most of the victims were minors without official identification documents, Indonesia’s disaster agency said on Saturday.

National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) chief Suharyanto said the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team is still working to determine the identities of the deceased students using DNA testing and other forensic methods.

“There are nine bodies so far, and they have not yet been identified because the process is still ongoing by the DVI team,” Suharyanto told reporters during a press briefing on Saturday.

He explained that the identification process has proven challenging as most of the victims were children who did not possess national ID cards or recorded fingerprints. “The difficulty lies in the fact that these victims are still children. They don’t have ID cards or fingerprint data, so DNA matching with their families is required,” he said.

The BNPB, which oversees the search and rescue operations, held a daily evaluation meeting with the DVI team on Friday after rescuers recovered several more victims from the rubble on the fourth day of search efforts.

Suharyanto added that visual identification was no longer possible due to the condition of the remains. “The physical features of the victims have changed significantly, so identification can’t be done visually. It must rely on matching available data and samples,” he said.

As of Saturday morning, BNPB data showed that 118 people had been found out of 167 known to be in the prayer hall when it collapsed. Of those, 104 were rescued alive while 14 were confirmed dead.

“Based on current data, there are still 49 people missing. We hope they can be found soon,” Suharyanto said.

The collapse occurred earlier this week at the Al-Khoziny Islamic boarding school, where students were gathered for evening prayers when the structure gave way. Search and rescue teams from the military, police, and local disaster agencies have been working around the clock to locate survivors and recover the dead.