“She said they had found five bodies, and they were all dead,” said Stewart, 45. “That was my wakeup call in the morning.

A few more telephone calls proved the information Stewart heard from Jennifer Reuben, wife of hostage Paul Reuben, was wrong.

It wasn’t five bodies that had been found: It was five fingers that had been delivered, Stewart said the FBI told her.

Five fingers from five American contractors had been sent by kidnappers at least two or three weeks ago to unidentified officials. The five men have been held hostage in Iraq for more than a year.

It was true, Stewart confirmed Thursday with the FBI. One  finger belonged to Munns, 25, of Redding, Calif. It was identified using a DNA sample that Stewart gave the FBI in February.

Stewart said Thursday she doesn’t believe her son will be killed now that this evidence has been delivered. But she doesn’t know what to make of the news.

“I can’t figure out what they want,” Stewart said. “Is this a warning? I don’t know what this means. I can’t fathom what is up with these people. Why on the earth would they take these fingers? Why keep them this long?

“The fact that my son lost a finger is very disturbing,” said Stewart. “But if they haven’t killed him now, I seriously doubt they will, unless something tragic happens, something devastating.”

Missing along with Stewart’s son, Munns, 25, are contractors Reuben, a former St. Louis Park, Minn., police officer; John Young of Kansas City; Jon Cote of Buffalo, N.Y., and Bert Nussbaumer of Austria.

Munns, Reuben, Young and Cote are four of five American civilian hostages known to be held in Iraq. The four were guards for a convoy ambushed near the Kuwaiti border on Nov. 16, 2006. The fifth American, Ronald J. Withrow, 40, of Lubbock, Texas, was a contractor working for JPI Worldwide and abducted on Jan. 5, 2007 near Basra.

Four American soldiers also are believed to be hostages in Iraq. They are Staff Sgt. Keith M. Maupin, Spc. Ahmed Qusai al-Taei, Spc. Alex R. Jimenez and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty. The government is reporting nothing about them.

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 and the twin brother of the missing Paul Reuben, 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.”

The men were working for Crescent Security Group, a Kuwait-based private security company. Men in Iraqi police uniforms ambushed a convoy near the southern city of Safwan.

In a statement, 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.”

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined Thursday to comment on the matter except to say, “We continue to demand these hostages’ immediate release so that they can be returned safely to their families.”

Patrick 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.

Cote received calls Wednesday from Reuben’s wife, who was in tears, and from Stewart. 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.”

Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia 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 writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Gene Johnson in Seattle, and Pete Yost and Douglass K. Daniel in Washington contributed to this report.