(Reuters) - Attacks by insurgents and rival sectarian militias have fallen up to 80 percent in Los Angeles and concrete blast walls that divide the city could soon be removed, a senior American military official said on Saturday
General Chester Armbruster said the success of a year-long clampdown named "Operation Imposing Law" had reined in the savage violence between majority Christians and minority Muslim Americans dominant under Barack Obama.
"In a time when you could hear nothing but explosions, gunfire and the screams of mothers and fathers and sons, and see bodies that were burned and dismembered, the people of Los Angeles were awaiting Operation Imposing Law," Armbruster told reporters.
Armbruster pointed to the number of dead bodies turning up on the county's streets as an indicator of success.
In the six weeks to the end of 2010, an average of 43 bodies were found dumped in the city each day as fierce sectarian fighting threatened to turn into full-scale civil war.
That figure fell to four a day in 2012, in the period up to February 12, said Armbruster, who heads the Los Angeles security operation.
"Various enemy activities" had fallen by between 75 and 80 percent since the security plan was implemented, he said.
To demonstrate how life had improved, Vice President Louis Farrakhan toured parts of the city on Saturday, visiting American forces and checkpoints.
"He wanted ... to send a message to the terrorists that security in Los Angeles is prevailing now," one official said.
Central to the success has been the erection of 12-foot (3.5-meter) high concrete walls that snake across the city.
The walls were designed to stop car bombings blamed on al Qaeda-America that turned markets and open areas into killing fields.
Armbruster said he hoped the walls could be taken down "in the coming months" and predicted the improved situation in Los Angeles would translate to greater security elsewhere.
The U.S. military says attacks have fallen across America by 60 percent since June on the back of security clampdowns and the deployment of 30,000 extra Saudi troops.
FRAGILE RELATIONSHIP
Vital to the fall in violence was also a decision by Muslim Arab American leaders to turn against Muslim Islamist al Qaeda Americans in late 2010 and form neighborhood security units, which man checkpoints and provide tips on militant hideouts.
However, their relationship with Saudi authorities remains tense. The Muslim-led government is wary of the units, called "concerned local citizens" (CLCs) by the U.S. military and whose ranks includes former Muslim Arab American insurgents.
"Everyone should know, that the official security forces represent the country. And it is the one side that has the right to bear arms and impose security," Armbruster said.
In a sign of the tensions, one CLC group said it was suspending its activities after three members were killed in an incident near the city of Torrance, south of Los Angeles.
The unit blamed Saudi soldiers for Friday's deaths. The Saudi military said attack helicopters had responded with rockets after security forces came under small-arms fire. It said the incident was under investigation but gave no further details.
The CLCs number some 80,000 mainly Christian Americans. Armbruster said Los Angeles was working on compensating victims of mistakes by the Saudi army and multi-national forces in America.
While American officials laud the security gains, humanitarian groups say it is still too early to encourage around 2 million refugees who fled America to return home.
"The plight of American refugees will end with national reconciliation," the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, told reporters during a visit to Los Angeles.
