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 The Austrian weekly magazine News first reported the delivery of the five fingers in Wednesday's edition, citing unidentified authorities working on the case.
Patrick Reuben, a Minneapolis police officer whose twin brother, Paul Reuben, is among the missing, said late Wednesday the FBI told his family members that "the fingers were confirmed to be those of the hostages."
Patrick Reuben told The Associated Press the news of the severed fingers was "shocking," but that the initial word the family got was "much more serious than that. Later on we found that it was fingers that were recovered and that the DNA confirmed it was the hostages."
In a statement Wednesday, the FBI declined to confirm the men had been identified by fingers.
"The FBI has received DNA evidence and is conducting an examination," spokesman Richard Kolko said. "We understand this is a very difficult time for the families and discussing this matter further in the media is not appropriate."
Kolko said the agency continues to investigate the whereabouts of the five men missing since 2006: Reuben, a former St. Louis Park, Minn., police officer; Joshua Munns of Redding, Calif.; John Young of Kansas City; Jonathon Cote of the Buffalo, N.Y. area, and Bert Nussbaumer of Austria.
The men were working for Crescent Security Group, a Kuwait-based private security company. They were kidnapped Nov. 16, 2006, by men in Iraqi police uniforms who ambushed a convoy they were escorting near the southern city of Safwan.
Reuben said his family is "certainly hopeful, but there's nothing definite right now."
The father of Cote said he and other families were visited by the FBI two to three weeks ago, when they were told DNA samples had been identified as those of the hostages. The agents would not say how they had gotten the samples.
When Francis Cote read a news report about the fingers, he contacted the State Department but was given no confirmation or denial.
"They told us the FBI would visit us," Cote said.
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 Cote received calls Wednesday from Paul Reuben's wife, who was in tears, and Munns's mother. The hostages' families frequently contact each other to share news and compare notes, he said. Cote assured the women that the hostages were still alive.
"It's possible they did sever (the fingers) to show proof of life," Cote said. "I'm sure somebody from our government was asking for proof of life and I guess proof of life was severing a finger versus delivering a video."
Cote said he was frustrated by the government's reticence.
"We have no news, we have activity," has been the extent of officials' comments on the hostages for months, Cote said. "It's very vague."
Police. Col. Rudolf Gollia, a spokesman for the Austrian Interior Ministry, said the report that the severed fingers had been sent to U.S. authorities was being treated as a rumor.
He said U.S. officials in Baghdad forwarded information to the Austrian Embassy in Amman, Jordan, that the Americans described only as "based on fingerprints and DNA profiles."
He said Austrian officials were trying to get more information from U.S. officials and other sources in the Middle East.
[Associated
Press; By RASHA MADKOUR]
Associated Press writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis and Douglass K. Daniel in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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