COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan troops won the final battle in a separatist conflict seen as one of the worlds most intractable wars, and put the island nation under government control for the first time since 1983, the military said. In the climactic final gunbattle, special forces troops killed Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran as he tried to flee the war zone in an ambulance early on Monday, state television reported. LTTE intelligence chief Pottu Amman and Soosai, head of the Sea Tiger naval wing, were also believed killed, the report said. Prabhakaran founded the LTTE on a culture of suicide before surrender, and had sworn he would never be taken alive. Army commander Lt-Gen Sarath Fonseka said troops on Monday morning had finished the task given to them by President Mahinda Rajapaksa three years ago. We have liberated the entire country by completely liberating the north from the terrorists. We have gained full control of LTTE-held areas, Fonseka announced on state TV. Rajapaksa declared victory on Saturday, even as the final battle in Asias longest modern war was intensifying. The final fight played out on a sandy patch of just 300 sq metres near the Indian Ocean islands northeastern coast, where the military said the last Tiger fighters had holed up in bunkers and surrounded themselves with land mines and booby traps. The official Media Centre for National Security said more than 250 Tigers had been killed in the final battle, which intensified on Saturday after the military said it had freed the last of 72,000 civilians trapped in the tiny war zone. News of the Tiger chiefs death came as state TV for the first time broadcast images of the body of his son and heir apparent, Charles Anthony, and other dead rebels. He was killed overnight, the military said, along with a host of other top LTTE fighters and political cadres, including political chief B Nadesan and spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan. In Colombo, demonstrators threw rocks at the British High Commission, tossed a burning effigy of Foreign Secretary David Miliband inside and spray-painted its heavily fortified wall with epithets and a message: LTTE headquarters. Rajapaksa prorogued parliament on Monday, the required step for him to take the role of speaker and address the body. He was due to make his formal declaration of victory there on Tuesday.