"It won't take a year to finish them off, to eliminate them," army chief Lieutenant General Sarath Fonseka said as his troops took control of the northern town of Kilinochchi for the first time in a decade.

Fonseka said taking Kilinochchi was the culmination of a major military offensive that began in March 2007. Daily fighting escalated in the past nine months, he said.

He said ground troops were heading to flush out the remaining pockets of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

"The LTTE are now confined into a small area spanning 40 kilometers (25 miles) long and about 40 kilometers wide along the north eastern coastal district of Mullaittivu," Fonseka said.

Mullaittivu is the last remaining town under rebel control and contains their main military facilities.

Fonseka said troops had killed 1,500 rebel fighters in the past 10 months. Army intelligence estimates there were between 1,700 and 1,900 Tigers left, he said. He did not give military casualties.

He said troops have already moved five kilometers (three miles) along the eastern coastline into Mullaittivu and the area would soon be brought under government control.

There was no immediate comment from the LTTE.

However, the pro-rebel website Tamilnet.com quoted the rebels as saying they had put up heavy resistance and "kept their casualties as low as possible in the defensive fighting (in Kilinochchi)." It gave no further details.

President Mahinda Rajapakse urged the rebels to lay down their arms and end their decades-old struggle for a separate homeland.

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