Israel confirmed Tuesday that the final six living hostages slated for release under phase one of a ceasefire deal would all be freed on Saturday, after the Hamas terror group announced that it would expedite the handovers.

The six include Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who have been held by Hamas since entering the Strip on their own in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

The other four, all of whom were taken on October 7, 2023, include father Tal Shoham and three young men kidnapped from the Nova music festival: Omer Shem-Tov, Omer Wenkert and Eliya Cohen.

Hamas is also slated to release the bodies of eight slain hostages over the next two weeks.

Families of all six living hostages confirmed that they were on the list of captives slated for release.

“I see Omer’s name on TV and I don’t believe it,” Shem-Tov’s mother Shelly said after receiving word, according to Channel 12 news. “Now I can say that we can breathe, and I’m just waiting to hug my Omer.”

Mengistu will have spent 3,821 days in captivity by the time he is released on Saturday, according to the Hostage Families Forum.

According to his family and Israeli officials, Mengistu crossed into northern Gaza from the beach at Zikim in September 2014.

The then-28-year-old was spotted by IDF security cameras, but made it through the fence before troops could reach the scene. He was picked up by a Hamas patrol and was not heard from until the terror group released a video purporting to show him alive in early 2023.

Mengistu hails from Ashkelon’s working-class Ethiopian-Israeli community. According to his family, he suffered from mental illness, and was given an exemption from military service.

Mengistu’s family has struggled over the years to rally public support or pressure the government to negotiate his release, with some relatives alleging racism and contrasting his plight with that of soldier Gilad Shalit, a cause celebre who was freed in 2011 in exchange for over 1,000 Palestinian inmates.

“We know that he is alive and in a bad mental and physical condition,” a relative told a Tel Aviv rally in August. “He’s been there not for a month or a year but for 10 years.”

Reports following the October 7, 2023, massacre indicated that........

© The Times of Israel