Saudi security operation against Islamic State fighters in Mecca - state TV

DUBAI: Saudi security forces undertook an operation against alleged Islamic State fighters in Mecca on Thursday, state television channel Ekhbariya said.

"The security authorities succeeded in their operation against a number of Daesh partisans holed up at a recreational area in Mecca," the TV station said in a news flash, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic state.

It gave no details, but al-Okaz newspaper reported that the forces surrounded a group of men in the Wadi Noman area south of the city and four wanted men were killed in a gun battle.

In an earlier, two-day security operation that ended on Sunday, two Islamic State suspects were killed and a third was wounded in southwestern Bisha province.

Saudi Arabia, the world´s top oil exporter, has been hit by a spate of deadly shootings and bombings targeting security forces or its Shi´ite Muslim minority since last year.

Islamic State´s local branches have claimed many of them. The group views Shi´ites as heretics but is also bitterly opposed to the wealthy Gulf kingdom´s Sunni Muslim rulers, whom it regards as having betrayed Islam through close ties with the West.