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Dozens of elementary school students in Cirebon, West Java were injured after the ceiling of their classroom collapsed on Wednesday.

Subagja, a fifth-grade teacher at SD Negeri Kramat III Cirebon, said the accident happened at noon, when 54 students were hard at work studying the Indonesian language.

“I’d warned the children to be careful because the ceiling had cracked, but I really didn’t expect this to happen,” he said.

Five students suffered serious injuries, while dozens of other students were slightly injured.

“The students were screaming because they were frightened and they instantly rushed out of the class,” Subagja said.

“I saw that some of them were bleeding.”

Subagja said the two-floor building was built with state funds and had been in use for just three months. However, the cracks on the ceiling had been noticeable for some time, he said.

Subagja said the steel beams used to support the ceiling had expanded over the summer.

School headmaster Sukhemi blamed the contractor who built the school, and said the builder should take responsibility for the accident.

Dedi Windiagiri, the head of the Cirebon school board, denied that the contractor was to blame. Climate change, he said, was the true cause of the accident. “I’ve already asked the contractor to fix the ceiling immediately,” he said.



Antara