MOSCOW — More than 200 Jewish residents have fled fighting near the Georgian border, most of them from a city where Russian bombers destroyed several apartment blocks last Saturday, according to the Jewish Agency.

The agency made contact with and co-ordinated efforts to evacuate Jewish families in Gori, a town famous as the birthplace of Soviet leader Josef Stalin, which borders the breakaway South Ossetia region.

Several dozen Jews in Gori decided to remain behind and protect their property, but most of the women and children left with other displaced Georgians for the capital, Tbilisi.

The Jewish Agency has sent extra staff to its Tbilisi mission and has set up a special hotline in Israel, as well as situation rooms in Tbilisi and Jerusalem, to handle requests for information from Georgian Jews living in Israel concerning relatives living in Georgia.

As of Sunday evening, eight Jews had arrived in Israel from Georgia, and as of Monday morning, 200 Georgian Jews had applied to make aliyah, a Jewish Agency spokesperson said.

Jewish Agency chairman Zeev Bielski said Monday that Israel’s “immigration and absorption department in Jerusalem is gearing up in tandem to beef up, as may be needed and as developments warrant, the staff of the [Jewish Agency] mission in Tbilisi with additional emissaries and workers from the other countries of the [former Soviet Union].”

Bielski said that the immigration department “is prepared to provide all necessary assistance, including the accelerated handling of those who want to examine the options for aliyah to Israel… [and it] has begun preparing absorption plans in Israel that will prove conducive to immigrants from Georgia.”

A JTA phone call to the local Jewish community centre in Gori went unanswered Sunday. Officials from the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee were also on their way to the area to co-ordinate relief efforts, an agency official in New York said Sunday.

Also Sunday, there were reports Israel would halt arms sales and military aid to Georgia.

Ha’aretz cited an anonymous senior defence official who said Israel feared that further aid to Georgia would provoke Russia into providing more advanced weaponry to Iran and Syria.

Israel has a longstanding defence relationship with Georgia and over the years has sold rockets, night vision and aerial drones to the former Soviet republic. A drone that was shot down by Russian forces in the breakway republic of Abkhazia earlier this year came from Israel.

Georgian troops withdrew Sunday from South Ossetia as Russian forces pressed near to the Georgian border of the enclave. According to estimates from the Georgian and Russian governments, the death toll for the conflict is almost 2,000.

Some 1,000 Jewish families once lived in the disputed Ossetia capital of Tskhinvali, but that number has dwindled to the single digits in the past two decades as internecine conflict ravaged the area.

Regional groups haven’t been able to reach the few Jews still left in Ossetia, the Jewish Agency said.

Between 10,000 and 12,000 Jews live in Georgia, mostly in Tbilisi.

The conflict showed no signs of easing Sunday and looked to be spreading to Abkhazia, on Georgia’s Black Sea border. Russian forces have not indicated whether they intend to push past Georgia’s border.

The drift toward all-out war with Georgia is the largest international clash for Russian armed forces in more than 20 years. War planes bombed deep in Georgian territory, hitting oil pipelines and the Tblisi airport, Georgia’s interior ministry said, according to Interfax.

Gori had been used as a staging ground for Georgian troops during their initial offensive on the Ossetian capital.

Georgian officials have called for a ceasefire and asked for peace talks to resolve the situation in South Ossetia. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and former Russian president Vladimir Putin have called the conflict a war and sought to sway international public opinion in their direction as the conflict unfolded last weekend.

Russian media reports on state-controlled television have described a genocide in South Ossetia by the Georgians, while Saakashvili has sought to characterize the conflict as an incursion on Georgian soil by Russian aggressors.

Since 1989, 23,287 people have immigrated to Israel from Georgia under the auspices of the Jewish Agency.

With files from Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf.