Victims of Armenian earthquake being airlifted to Israel to be fitted with prosthetics

In response to a devastating earthquake in Armenia in 1988, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) financed and arranged an El Al airlift of more than 60 victims of the earthquake, most of them amputees, from Yerevan, Soviet Armenia, to Israel. There, the trauma victims underwent rehabilitation and were fitted for prosthetic limbs. Seven weeks later, the earthquake victims were flown back to Armenia, with most able to disembark with little to no assistance. This humanitarian airlift marked the first occasion that an Israeli airline had landed in the Soviet Union since Moscow severed ties with Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War. JDC also established a rehabilitation center in Yerevan, Armenia.