VAN, TURKEY: Rescuers on Saturday recovered the body of a second journalist missing underneath the rubble of an earthquake-shattered hotel as the death toll in the second earthquake to hit eastern Turkey in about two weeks rose to at least 26.

Colleagues and friends wept as rescue workers pulled out the body of Sebahattin Yilmaz from beneath the debris of the Bayram Hotel -- one of two hotels that fell apart when the 5.7-magnitude quake hit the eastern city of Van late Wednesday. The body of Yilmaz's colleague, Cem Emir, was pulled out of the rubble five hours earlier. Both were reporters for the Dogan news agency and were covering the aftermath of an earlier, more powerful earthquake.

Relief workers who had arrived in the city to help survivors of the earlier earthquake that hit the region on October 23 also became victims when the two hotels collapsed, weakened by the earlier temblor.

Rescuers pulled out 14 bodies from the wreckage of the Bayram Hotel as well as the low-budget Aslan Hotel on Friday, raising the death toll to 26, according to state-run TRT television.

Authorities called off rescue operations at the Aslan by the late afternoon, but rescuers continued their search for possible survivors at the Bayram, their work made more difficult by heavy snow that began to fall in the evening.

It was not known how many people remained buried in the rubble of the Bayram Hotel.

"We are not able to hear any voices,'' said Disaster management official Askit Dayi said Friday. "But still we are removing layers of concrete in a way as if there are survivors."