The Syrian civil war has hit close to home.
Reuters news service reports that Nicole Mansfield, 33, of Flint, a convert to Islam, has been killed in Syria while fighting with opposition forces against the government of President Bashar al-Assad .in the country's civil war, her family said on Thursday.
The woman's aunt told Reuters that the FBI had informed her on Thursday afternoon of the death of her niece, but said she did not have the details of how she died.
"I'm just devastated," said the aunt, Monica Mansfield Speelman. "Evidently, she was fighting with opposition forces."
Mansfield was a single mother of an 18-year-old daughter and had converted to Islam about five years ago, reporters Brendan O'Brien and Mark Hosenball write.
"I didn't think she would stoop that low to go over there and try to harm anybody," Speelman said of her niece, who she said had worked at a group home, Reuters reports.
