A woman walks under the snow in Istanbul on January 7, 2015.

One worker was killed and four were trapped by an avalanche in Turkey’s northeastern Trabzon region on Saturday following a week of vicious snow storms across the region, the disaster management agency (AFAD) said.

The five workers were repairing a broken generator in a construction site for a tunnel when the avalanche struck, AFAD spokesman Dogan Eskinat said. AFAD teams had recovered one body and the effort to rescue other people was underway.

Hundreds of labourers die on the job every year in Turkey and its lax worker safety record has come under increased scrutiny since May, when a coal mine disaster killed 301 workers in the western town of Soma, the country’s worst industrial accident in history.

Six months after the tragedy Turkey tightened work safety regulations and introduced tougher penalties for breaches.

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