At least 33 rescue workers have been killed and 53 injured after a second avalanche came down on a mountain road in eastern Turkey, striking emergency teams sent to find people missing after an earlier snowslide.

The second avalanche on Wednesday increased the overall death toll to 38.

About 300 emergency service workers had been called to a highway near the mountain-surrounded town of Bahçesaray in Van province, which borders Iran, after an avalanche struck the area late on Tuesday, killing five people and leaving two missing.

The rescue team was struck by the second avalanche on Wednesday afternoon. Turkey’s emergency and disaster management agency, AFAD, said 33 bodies had been recovered from the mass of snow on the steep slope. The governor of Van province, Mehmet Emin Bilmez, said eight military police officers, three government-paid village guards, three firefighters and nine volunteers were among the dead.

Emergency teams were still searching for colleagues under the snow, Bilmez said. He did not provide a figure for how many more could be missing.

About 30 emergency workers were in hospital after either being pulled out of the heap of snow or escaping by themselves on Wednesday, Turkey’s interior ministry said. There was no further information on their conditions.

Video from the scene showed at least three overturned vehicles at the bottom of a hill in a snowstorm. Some rescuers were climbing a steep incline to get out of the mass of snow while others dug frantically into the snow with shovels and pickaxes. Fog, heavy snow and strong winds were hampering the rescue efforts.