There were emotional scenes at Ben Gurion airport on Tuesday night as 30 new immigrants arrived from Georgia along with 300 Israelis on special government flights.
Twenty of the olim were from Gori, the city north west of Tblisi battered by Russian missiles. The Jewish Agency had brought the community of some 200 people to the relative safety of Tblisi.
"On Friday our home was damaged by shrapnel," said 15-year-old Anari Basova, who fled with his aunt and cousin. "I have never been so scared in my life. We hid until the Jewish Agency sent a taxi for us the next day.
"We felt safer in Tblisi. The worst thing was that we saw on the television our home and it had been hit again even harder. We probably would have been killed had we stayed in Gori.
