GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Syrian government air raids killed scores of people in northern Syria on Saturday, a day after loyalist troops suffered yet another defeat on the battlefield, according to reports by activists and monitoring groups.
At least 85 people died in the strikes, which targeted territories held by both the Islamic State and the rebel opposition, the reports said.
Airstrikes are commonplace in towns held by government opponents, but the toll Saturday was unusually high. It came as a reminder that the government of President Bashar Assad still has unchecked control of the skies in Syria, even as its army loses ground.
A rebel coalition dominated by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra is celebrating the capture of the town of Ariha in the northern province of Idlib after government forces fled Friday. The victory by the Jaysh al-Fatah coalition puts the opposition in control of an entire province for the first time.
That defeat followed the rout of government troops by the Islamic State from the historic town of Palmyra the previous week. The extremist group has not yet set about destroying the magnificent Roman remains, for which the remote desert city is famous, as many fear it will.
But on Saturday it blew up another landmark for which the city is renowned — the notorious Tadmor prison, where generations of political prisoners were detained and tortured over the past four decades.
The Islamic State posted photographs on the Internet showing fighters rigging the prison compound with explosives, then detonating them in a giant ball of fire.
Another Islamic State-held town, al-Bab, in the province of Aleppo, was the target of the deadliest of Saturday’s airstrikes. Helicopters dropped two barrel bombs — canisters packed with explosives and nails — on an early morning farmers’ market.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 51 people were killed in the raid, and activists put the number at more than 50, with at least 20 others wounded. Almost all of them were civilians.
Another raid hit a rebel-held neighborhood in Aleppo, killing 12, activists said.
