Britney Spears' ex shot by Taliban

Singer Britney Spears.

The pilot who dated Britney Spears and helped her fight drugs has been shot dead by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

John Sundahl, 44, was flying near Kabul, where he works, when a missile hit his helicopter last week.

The news has come as a devastating blow to Spears, 33, sources claim.

Sundahl and Spears met at Alcoholics Anonymous in Los Angeles in 2007 and briefly dated.

According to numerous interviews at the time, he helped Britney through her darkest hour of public meltdown, and warned that alcohol could kill her if she didn't stop.

"I told her: 'If you fall off the wagon, I don't think you will live'," Sundahl told the National Enquirer in 2007.

"If you don't want to get sober for yourself, do it for your kids."

"She truly wants to stop what she's doing, and she has changed her life in another direction. She doesn't get drunk every night and pass out."

Their relationship ended after a few months but they stayed friends.

And despite moving to Afghanistan last year, where he flies dignitaries in and out of the conflict zone, Sundahl was said to have started seeing Spears again in the summer of 2014, the Daily Mirror reported.

A source close to Britney told the Daily Mirror on Friday: "She is devastated. Britney thought he was a lovely man."

Spears, who has two sons Jayden James, eight, and Sean Preston, nine, with ex-husband Kevin Federline, has yet to issue an official comment.

Sundahl's body has been expatriated to the Untied States and he was buried in a Buddhist ceremony this week in Los Angeles.

His brother Karl, who also lives in LA, told the Mirror: "It's heartbreaking - John went there to try to repair the country.

"He was trying to help people, he would often say that the country was in chaos."

- Daily Mail