MONTREAL • Canadian singer Celine Dion, whose husband died last week, is facing another family crisis with a brother on the verge of death, a Montreal newspaper reported.

Mr Daniel Dion, 59, one of her 13 siblings, has cancer and may have only a matter of days to live, sister Claudette Dion told the Journal of Montreal.

"It's very painful. It's a matter of days or hours," she told the paper after visiting her brother in the hospital.

Ms Dion, 47, had asked for privacy after she announced on Thursday the death of her husband and long-time manager, Mr Rene Angelil, at the age of 73 after a long battle with throat cancer.

The singer cancelled her weekend concerts in Las Vegas following the news of Mr Angelil's death. She is set to return to the stage next month, her official website said.

"He will be remembered as a gentle man, generous and kind, an unprecedented visionary, a modern Pygmalion, a Renaissance man," she said in a Facebook post.

She has not made any recent comments on the site about her brother.

Mr Angelil stepped down as Ms Dion's manager in 2014, turning her career over to a friend of the couple.

The Canadian entertainment manager, who discovered Ms Dion when she was 12 years old and drove her career to stardom, married her in 1994 at a lavish wedding in Montreal's Notre Dame Basilica.

The couple have three sons, Rene-Charles, 14, and five-year-old twins Nelson and Eddy.

Mr Angelil's illness, first diagnosed in 1999, prompted Ms Dion to put her career on hold in 2014, suspending her Las Vegas residency.

Ms Dion said he had supported her later return to the stage.

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE