Miami: Severed fingers of five Western contractors were sent to the US military in Iraq, giving the men's relatives hope that they are still alive, a brother of one of the missing men said.

The men were abducted in two separate incidents that occurred a month and a half apart more than two years ago, a US government official said today in Washington.

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 said 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."

Four of the men were guards for a convoy ambushed near the Kuwaiti border on Nov 16,2006. The fifth, Ronald J. Withrow, 40,of Lubbock, Texas, was a contractor working for JPI Worldwide and abducted on Jan 5,2007 near Basra.

Source : PTI