Syria Country Info - Asia

Description and Basic Information

Syria with its capital Damascus is located in Asia (Middle East, bordering the Mediterranean Sea). It covers some 185,181 square kilometres (slightly larger than North Dakota) with 19,747,000 citizens. Arabic, Kurdish, Armenian, French and English are the official languages spoken in Syria (consider regional differences). Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Turkey and Lebanon are bordering countries.

Trave to Syria is strongly discouraged due to a state of severe political crisis. Since January 2011, the unrest within the country has continued to intensify and thousands of people have been injured or killed by government security forces. There also have been reports of some fighting between troops who have cast their lot with anti-government demonstrators and others who remain loyal to the government.

Pictures from Capital (Damascus)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Syria

The topography featuresprimarily semiarid and desert plateau with narrow coastal plain and mountains in west. The average density of population is about 106 per km². The climate in Syria can be described as mostly desert with hot, dry, sunny summers (June to August) and mild, rainy winters (December to February) along coast, cold weather with snow or sleet periodically in Damascus. Potential natural disasters are dust storms, sandstorms.

To reach someone in Syria dial +963 prior to a number. There are 3,871,000 installed telephones. And there are 9,697,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 900, 1800 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".sy". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 220V - 50Hz. The following list are the 14 regions/states in Syria we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Syrian population grew at a rate of 1.95% (or by 433,751 citizens). With 82,133 deaths and 542,522 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at 2.07%. -26,638 persons more in total emmigrated from the country than immigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Syria: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.