Sri Lankan troops won the final battle in a 25-year civil war with the Tamil Tiger separatists on Monday and the rebel leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran has been killed, TV reports said.

Prabhakaran was killed on Monday while trying to flee the war zone in an ambulance along with his two top deputies, the reports said.

The victory has put the entire nation under government control for the first time since 1983, the military said.

"Heroic troops liberated the entire area from LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), killing more than 250 Tigers a while ago," an official at the state-run Media Centre for National Security said. -Reuters