A posting on an Islamic Web site claimed Tuesday that an al-Qaida-linked group has slain a second American hostage in Iraq, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. The claim could not be verified immediately.

The posting came as the militant group's 24-hour deadline passed. It had demanded the release of all Iraqi women from U.S. custody.

AP (ENLARGE)
In this video released Monday, masked men stand behind a man identified as American construction contractor Eugene Armstrong, who is later shown being beheaded.
John Spink/AJC
Police officers have been at the Hensley residence in Marietta.
AP (ENLARGE)
This image (left) identified as that of Eugene Armstrong of Hillsdale, Mich., appeared Saturday on a Web site used by Islamic terrorists. A man identified as Jack Hensley of Marietta is held captive in another video released Saturday (right).
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"The youths of Tawhid and Jihad killed the second American hostage after the end of the deadline," the statement said. It was signed with the pseudonym Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, according to AP.

The Marietta family of Iraq hostage Jack Hensley received a call from the White House earlier Tuesday, family spokesman Jake Haley said. Haley said they spoke to Andrew Card, Bush's chief of staff.

"They said they were everything they can," Haley said during a brief statement to reporters outside the Hensley home. "It was nice to hear from them."

A gruesome video broadcast Monday showed an American hostage being beheaded by Islamic militant kidnappers in Iraq, who threatened to kill a second hostage — either Hensley or a Briton — within 24 hours.

The video showed the beheading of a man identified as Eugene "Jack" Armstrong, 53, of Hillsdale, Mich.

Cyndi Armstrong, a cousin by marriage, remembered Armstrong, known as Jack, as "a good guy" who "didn't like to stay in one place. He loved to travel."

She said his family was praying for Hensley and Kenneth Bigley and their families. A prayer vigil was held Monday night in Hillsdale.

Hensley's wife, Patricia, called the Armstrong family Monday night to share her sorrow, she told "Good Morning America" today. "Their prayers are going out for Jack."

Looking tired and drawn, Patricia Hensley said today that family was holding out hope for communication between the captors and government officials. She said the three men were working in Iraq "with no hidden agenda."

"I'd certainly like my husband home. My daughter would like her father back," she said.

Armstrong, Hensley, who turns 49 Wednesday, and Bigley were kidnapped Thursday from the house they shared in a wealthy Baghdad neighborhood. All three worked as civil engineers for the same construction company.

The militant group led by al-Qaida ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi claimed responsibility for the beheading and said another hostage would be killed in 24 hours unless two Iraqi women were released from U.S.-controlled prisons in Iraq.

In a statement issued after the video was posted, Armstrong's family said, "This is what we did not want to hear. We are praying for Jack Hensley and Kenneth Bigley and their families."

Patricia Hensley said in a statement on CNN's "NewsNight With Aaron Brown," on Monday that she was "devastated" to hear that Armstrong was shown being beheaded in a video posted on the Internet earlier in the day.

Earlier Monday, Patricia Hensley told ABC News that she prays that his captors in Iraq will show him mercy. She also appeared on Al-Jazeera television, where she said she believed that her husband, like all Americans in Iraq, was there to help the Iraqi people.

In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that the body of the slain hostage had been recovered, but the official would provide no information about where or when it had been found.

The man beheaded on the nine-minute videotape appears to be Armstrong, but the CIA was reviewing the tape to be sure, the official said.

The tape, posted on an Internet Web site used by Islamic militants, shows a man seated on the floor, blindfolded and wearing an orange jumpsuit with his hands bound behind his back. Five militants dressed in black stand behind him, four of them armed with assault rifles. On the wall is a black banner of al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad — Arabic for "Monotheism and Holy War."

The militant in the center reads a statement as the hostage rocks back and forth and side to side where he sits.

"You, sister, rejoice," the militant says. "God's soldiers are coming to get you out of your chains and restore your purity by returning you to your mother and father." The militant then grabs the hostage, seated at his feet, and cuts his throat.

In a video Saturday setting the 48-hour deadline for the beheading, the militants demanded the release of female Iraqi prisoners detained by the U.S. military. The military says it is holding two women with ties to ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, including Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha, a scientist who became known as "Dr. Germ" for helping Iraq make weapons out of anthrax, and a biotechnology researcher. But there may also be women imprisoned as common criminals.

Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abdul-Jabbar, a member of the Association of Muslim Scholars, conservative Iraqi clerics who oppose the U.S. presence in Iraq but have interceded in the past to win the release of foreign hostages, questioned the claim of only two female prisoners in U.S. and British custody.

Abdul-Jabbar told Al-Jazeera pan-Arab satellite television there were "tens, perhaps hundreds of Iraqi women prisoners in the occupation's jail that were supposed to be released before this tragedy."

The militant group has claimed responsibility for killing at least six hostages in the Middle East, including Armstrong and another American, Nicholas Berg, who was abducted in April.

Armstrong's cousin, Rick Gamber, said on NBC's "Today Show" Tuesday that Armstrong was trying to do good in Iraq but had mentioned the danger and "knew that he was being watched."

"I would just hope that people would realize this isn't something that there should be retaliation for," Gamber said. "Our family feels a great deal of grief. We hope the criminals are brought to justice, but we certainly don't want people to overreact and do something foolish."

Armstrong grew up in Hillsdale, in southern Michigan, but left the area around 1990. His work in construction took him around the world. He lived in Thailand, where he married a local woman, before going to Iraq.

His younger brother, Frank Armstrong, also of Hillsdale, said he last talked to his brother about 18 months ago.

"It was a shock. It was a real shock," he told The Toledo Blade. "I don't know what this world's about anymore."

Armstrong, Hensley and Bigley worked for Gulf Supplies & Commercial Services, a construction company based in the United Arab Emirates.

Hensley went to a war zone to take care of his family, his younger brother, Ty Hensley, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday from his home in Charlotte after learning of Armstrong's death.

"He took the job primarily to get his family above water," Ty Hensley said. "When he went over there, no one had been decapitated. He was over there trying to help his family."

The series of life-or-death deadlines set by the kidnappers is emotionally draining, Hensley said. "This morning, I was very happy when I got up and there was no news," he said, referring to the original 48-hour deadline.

In January, just before leaving for Iraq, Jack Hensley was best man at his younger brother's wedding.

Jack Hensley graduated from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte with a mathematics degree in 1977. He worked as a substitute teacher in Cobb County from October 2002 to May 2003, said school system spokesman Jay Dillon.

Patricia Hensley said her husband had been in Baghdad to help the Iraqi people succeed.

"My husband and the other two gentlemen absolutely loved seeing these people flourish," she told ABC News. "They could take their own lives in their own hands, they could go forward with it, and they were doing that."

Hensley wrote his wife recently that he feared he was being "staked out" in Baghdad and that Iraqi guards assigned as security feared for their own safety, his brother said on NBC's "Today" show. "One told him, 'I have to leave this work or they will kill me,' " Ty Hensley said.

The faltering security prompted Patricia Hensley to ask her husband to come home, Ty Hensley said. Outside the Hensley home near Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, a Cobb County police officer blocked the street Monday. Cobb Public Safety Director G.M. Lloyd said an officer will be stationed there "as long as necessary." Lloyd said local law enforcement was assisting the FBI and other federal agencies.

Not even elected officials paying respects or middle school students with a stack of handmade cards were allowed into the house. Family spokesman Jake Haley met Cobb County Commissioner Helen Goreham outside. Goreham, whose district includes the Hensley neighborhood, brought notes from U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and U.S. Rep. Johnny Isakson.

Chambliss and Isakson "asked me to bring contact information to the family for any needs they might have," Goreham said. "We decided it would be better for just one person to come, that it would be more respectful of the family's need for privacy."

Haley also took delivery of cards made by members of the Pine Mountain Middle School orchestra. The Hensleys' 13-year-old daughter, Sarah, attends the school.

Alex Davis, 13, one of the two boys who came to the house Monday, thumbed through the cards. One read, "I'm sorry he had to go there. You have to trust in God. Everything will be OK." Monday's grisly decapitation was the latest killing in a particularly violent month in Iraq, with more than 300 people dead in insurgent attacks and U.S. military strikes over the last seven days.

North of Baghdad, insurgents attacked a U.S. patrol near the town of Sharqat, killing an American soldier. Gunmen in Baghdad assassinated two clerics from a powerful Sunni Muslim group that has served as a mediator to release hostages. U.S. warplanes struck in Fallujah, killing two. In Mosul, a car bombing killed three people. The number of car bombings so far in September in Iraq, 32, is the highest recorded in any single month.

— The Associated Press contributed to this article.