More than 50 Jews have turned to representatives of the Jewish Agency in Georgia requesting to immigrate to Israel. Some of them live in Gori, the city near the South Ossetian border which was bombed by Russia during the weekend as part of a massive Russian response to a Georgian attempted takeover of South Ossetia.
Since the outbreak of hostilities, the Jewish Agency for Israel has assisted some 200 Jews living near Gori, evacuating them to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, where the rest of the country's 12,000 Jews reside.
Since 1989, 23,287 people have immigrated to Israel from Georgia under the auspices of the Jewish Agency for Israel.
The Jewish Agency has set up a special hotline in Israel to handle requests for information from Georgian Jews living in Israel concerning relatives living in Georgia: +972.2.6202202