TORONTO - The mother of a Canadian man killed while fighting Islamic State militants in Syria says his body will soon be back on Canadian soil.
Tina Martino, of Niagara Falls, Ont., says a Kurdish group that fought alongside her son, Nazzareno Tassone, recovered his body and will be arranging to fly it back to Canada in the coming weeks.
The 24-year-old died in December while fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa.
The leader of a Kurdish community centre in Toronto that's been working with the family says Tassone's body was recovered on Saturday after ISIL fighters abandoned the site where it was being kept.
Martino says she spent the past five months hoping her son's body would be recovered so she could give him a proper funeral.
She had finally given in to family demands to hold a memorial service without a burial, but says funeral plans will go ahead once he's repatriated.
