Trooper Marc Diab dreamed of a military career from the time he was a boy in war-torn Lebanon and wanted to bring peace to the world, the mother of the latest Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan said Monday.

The 22-year-old soldier, who emigrated to Canada with his family in 2000, was killed Sunday in a roadside bomb attack that wounded four other Canadian soldiers.

His mother Jihan Diab said from her home in Mississauga, Ont., that her son was proud to be in the military and was fulfilling a dream.

"Marc called himself a soldier since he was probably eight, or before that," she said.

"What a hero he is. He was never scared. He wanted peace for every single part of the world."

Diab wanted to continue his military career after his five-year stint was up in 2011.

"He had plans to study and do something else within the military, I don't know what it was," his mother said. "He told me, `Mom, it's good. I won't be in danger so much."'

Diab was the 112th Canadian soldier to die as part of the Afghan mission since 2002, and the fourth in less than a week.

He had planned to settle down with his longtime girlfriend Mary Barakat after she finished university, his mother said.

"I actually feel like he's still with me right now and he's trying to make me strong, but I'm so sensitive I always cry," Barakat told Toronto TV station CP24. "Even when I was with him, I always just let my emotions out like that.

"We were actually talking the night before it happened. We were talking online and he was talking about all the plans he had for the summer and how much fun he wanted to have, and he kept saying, `I'm so excited to come home and see everyone."'

In Afghanistan, at least 2,000 NATO soldiers gathered on the tarmac Monday at Kandahar Airfield to bid farewell to Diab.

As Diab's flag-draped casket was loaded aboard a waiting military transport plane, soldiers gathered at the end of the ramp to console each other and peer into the open hatch.

The attack that killed Diab, a member of the Royal Canadian Dragoons based in Petawawa, Ont., happened in the southern portion of Shah Wali Kot district, a mountainous region and well-known transit point for Taliban fighters entering the province.

Last week, three other soldiers -- Warrant Officer Dennis Brown, Cpl. Dany Fortin and Cpl. Kenneth O'Quinn -- were killed by a roadside bomb in the Arghandab district, northwest of Kandahar city.

In Afghanistan, Brig.-Gen. Jonathan Vance said Diab died in "pursuit of a noble goal" -- the desire to transform an "unstable and impoverished country into a secure and self-sufficient nation."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Diab "paid the ultimate price" for his country, and his life and death serve as an example of the bravery of Canadian soldiers on this mission.

Diab loved children and was the leader of an annual church camp for kids, his mother said.

"He wanted more kids to attend this year," she said. "He was preparing for it even from there (Afghanistan)."

The four other soldiers wounded Sunday were reportedly in stable condition, and three of them were to be evacuated to a U.S. army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, for further care.

A Facebook group created in Diab's memory had more than 1,000 members sharing stories about the soldier, with one mourner recalling he "always had a smile on his face."

Another wrote: "I remember in Grade 11 when we made up our minds about joining the army, that's all we could talk about."