Hamas releases 6 Israeli hostages promised under first stage of cease-fire deal

( NYPost )

Hamas on Saturday released all six remaining living Israeli hostages promised under the first stage of the ongoing cease-fire deal — as one heartbroken family finally received the remains of a mother murdered in terrorist captivity.

The two newly freed hostages — Tal Shoham and Avera Mengistu — were received by members of the International Committee to the Red Cross at the handover site in Rafah in southern Gaza.

Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov and Omer Wenkert were released at Nuseirat in the Gaza Strip later on Saturday. All three have since arrived at an IDF facility near the Israel-Gaza border and are receiving medical treatment.

As in past instances, Hamas released the hostages in elaborately staged propaganda ceremonies. Photos show a thin but smiling Shem Tov standing with his armed captors shortly before the release. At one point, the video showed him kissing the forehead of a Hamas terrorist.

“We didn’t even know what he would look like. He just came out and surprised us all, with the smile, the wave — it’s just crazy,” his father Malki Shem Tov told The Times of Israel.  

All five hostages had been reunited with family by Saturday morning, videos of emotional reunions showed. 

Hamas released Hisham Al-Sayed in Gaza City to the representatives of the Red Cross — who have worked closely with the terrorist organization —  without a ceremony. 

The exchanges followed the horrific discovery that Hamas terrorists handed over the remains of a Gazan woman instead of Shiri Bibas, an Israeli mother whose body was supposed to be returned to Israel along with those of her two young sons.

The 32-year-old mom was kidnapped during the Oct. 7 attack, along with her boys, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, who at just 9 months was the youngest taken during the massacre.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Hamas will pay “the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement.”

Hamas officials called it an “unfortunate mistake” and said they were investigating it, according to reports.

Israeli authorities confirmed Friday that Shiri Bibas’ body had been returned.

Autopsy results showed that terrorists murdered the boys “in cold blood” with their bare hands, the Israeli Defense Forces said Friday. Hamas had previously claimed they were killed in an air strike.

The Bibases became symbols of Hamas’ savagery after video of the family being mercilessly ripped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz ricocheted across the world. The terrorists put on a sick, macabre parade Thursday as they turned over the corpses thought to be hers and her sons’ as well as 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz.

Bibas’ husband, Yarden, was kidnapped separately and released alive on Feb. 1. 

Among those released Saturday were a pair who’ve been held captive by the ghoulish terrorists in Gaza for at least a decade.  

Mengistu and al-Sayed, had been held captive for at least 10 years before the terror group and its allies launched their bloodthirsty Oct. 7, 2023 rampage in Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping another 251.