The death toll after the collapse of an Islamic boarding school building in Indonesia has risen to 36, the country's disaster mitigation agency says.

Efforts continued for a seventh day to search for the bodies of 27 students still declared missing - mostly teenage boys from the ages of 13 to 19 - trapped under the rubble, the agency said.

Cranes were deployed to excavate debris and search and evacuation efforts were 60 per cent complete, according to the agency, which said it expected to clear all debris and finish the search on Monday.

The Al Khoziny school in the town of Sidoarjo in East Java province caved in last Monday, collapsing on top of hundreds of teenage students during afternoon prayers, its foundations unable to support ongoing construction work on its upper floors.

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