Moscow: At least 39 people were killed or wounded in a series of air strikes on the city of Raqqa in northern Syria on Saturday, Britain-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It said the dead included women and children and more than 60 people were wounded. It did not specify who had conducted the air strikes.

A cessation of hostilities in Syria took effect three weeks ago, reducing violence but not halting the fighting as peace talks take place in Geneva. The deal does not include Al Qaida or Daesh terrorists, whose de facto capital in Syria is Raqqa.

An activist group called Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently said more than 40 had been killed, and that separate strikes hit areas in the north of Raqqa province.

The Observatory said 16 people were also killed in air strikes in Raqqa on Friday.

It said that Russian warplanes carried out dozens of air strikes in and around the historic city of Palmyra on Saturday adding that 70 raids had hit the city and its immediate vicinity, with no immediate reports of casualties.

Government forces and their allies are aiming to capture Palmyra, some 200km southwest of Raqqa and also held by Daesh since May.

Russian military officials said on Friday that Russian warplanes are continuing to conduct airstrikes in Syria, making clear that the Kremlin intends to maintain muscular support for Syrian President Bashar Al Assad despite an announced military drawdown this week.

The announcement came a day after President Vladimir Putin said Russia could redeploy to Syria “within hours” if it wanted to. Russian warplanes are conducting 20 to 25 sorties a day to support the Syrian army’s attempt to reconquer the ancient city of Palmyra, Lt Gen Sergei Rudskoi, a spokesman for the Russian military’s General Staff, said on Friday.

That pace is slower than the more than 100 sorties a day the Russians were conducting in early February, before a shaky ceasefire took effect. But it is still a powerful indication that Putin has not abandoned Al Assad despite a hard-line stance taken by Syrian negotiators at peace talks in Geneva this week.

“The Russian aerospace forces will continue to deliver airstrikes upon the terrorist groups [Daesh] and Al Nusra Front in Syrian territory,” Rudskoi told reporters at a briefing in Moscow. Daesh took over Palmyra last summer.

The still-significant pace of strikes suggests that Russia retains a substantial number of warplanes at its Khmeimim air base in Syria’s Latakia province even after the drawdown Putin announced Monday.

At the time, Russian officials said they would not abandon their fight against “terrorism” in Syria — a word they use to refer to Daesh and Al Qaida but also to more moderate groups fighting Al Assad. The Syrian president is Russia’s major Arab ally, and the Russian military has had a presence in Syria since the Soviet era.

Russia has said it plans to leave its powerful S-400 anti-aircraft missile system in place in Syria, a deterrent against Turkey, Saudi Arabia and any other nation that might be tempted to engage in its own aerial intervention against Al Assad.

Fighting has diminished since the ceasefire went into effect three weeks ago, but the Syrian army has continued to battle its opponents on the ground, according to witnesses, Syrian rebel groups and US officials. Opposition representatives at the deadlocked peace talks in Geneva this week were sceptical that the ceasefire would hold if there is no prospect of a lasting peace deal, since they see the current truce as locking in the Syrian army’s recent territorial gains.

Russian airmen coming home from Syria this week were greeted as victorious heroes, with public rhetoric suggesting that the deployment is truly winding down. Over the more than five months of air strikes, Russia has managed to secure Al Assad’s slipping hold on power. The Kremlin also has pressed the West to reengage with it after two years of isolation following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

That strategy appears to have worked: Secretary of State John Kerry plans to visit Moscow next week to discuss Syria with top Russian officials.