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The death toll from last week’s earthquake in southeast Turkey has risen to 40, as rescue workers concluded efforts to find survivors in the rubble.

With no hope of finding any more people alive, search and rescue operations at the Bayram Hotel were declared finished on Sunday and earth-moving machines began to clear the debris, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Search efforts at a second hotel, the low-budget Aslan Hotel, ended two days ago.

The 5.7-magnitude quake struck the city of Van on Wednesday, toppling the two hotels. The buildings had apparently been weakened by the force of another earthquake two weeks earlier that killed nearly 600 people in the region.

The victims in the second quake include two journalists and a Japanese relief worker who had rushed to the region in the aftermath of the 7.2-magnitude quake that struck on October 23. Eight workers who were in Van to assemble temporary housing units for survivors were also killed.