Saudi security forces have launched a security operation near the city of Mecca, killing four men suspected of belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), Saudi media have reported.

The Jeddah-based al-Okaz newspaper said on Thursday that the forces surrounded a group of men in the Wadi Noman area south of the city where four wanted men were killed in a gun battle.

State TV channel al-Ekhbariya also reported that "security authorities had succeeded in their operation against a number of Daesh partisans holed up at a recreational area in Mecca," using the Arabic acronym for ISIL.

In an operation that ended on Sunday, two ISIL suspects were killed and a third was wounded in the southwestern Bisha province.

ISIL, which according to reports has recruited thousands of foreign fighters, still controls large parts of Syria and Iraq after declaring a "caliphate" spanning from northwestern Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad.

According to US figures, there are between 19,000 and 25,000 ISIL fighters in Iraq and Syria.