Riyadh and London, Asharq Al-Awsat—President Bashar Al-Assad has no future in Syria, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said on Tuesday, adding that his country’s position on the crisis in Syria was “unchanged.”

Speaking at a joint news conference with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius in Riyadh, Jubeir said: “The position of the kingdom is that Bashar [Al-Assad] is the problem in the Syria crisis. He killed hundreds of thousands of his people, displaced millions and destroyed the country as a whole.”

“He has no future in Syria,” he added.

A key opponent of Assad, Saudi Arabia has long insisted that in order for a political solution to be achieved in Syria, Assad must leave power.

Almost a quarter of a million people have been killed and half of Syria’s population displaced since the conflict began in 2011.

The number of Iraqi volunteers fighting with government forces in Syria has reached 8,000, an Iraqi military source has revealed.

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat on the condition of anonymity, the source said: “The number of Iraqi volunteers currently present in Syria within the framework of Abu Fadl Al-Abbas Brigade and other groups has reached about 8,000.”

The source said the Iraqi government has nothing to do with the volunteering process and that Iraqi fighters “often travel to Beirut as tourists and then enter the Syrian territory.”

This comes after reports last week that thousands of members of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Force, which consists of Shi’ite volunteers, were preparing to cross into Syria to fight alongside government forces against Western-backed rebels and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group.