BAGHDAD: Attacks across Iraq killed 33 people on Wednesday, the latest in a months-long surge in violence that has left more than 4,000 people dead this year.
The shootings and bombings struck in Baghdad and restive parts of the north and west, leaving dozens more wounded, security and medical officials said.
The protracted spike in bloodletting has fuelled fears that Iraq is slipping back into the all-out conflict that plagued it in 2006 and 2007, when a brutal sectarian war left tens of thousands dead.
In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomb exploded in north Baghdad, killing at least 16 people and wounding 50 others, security and medical officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Elsewhere in and around the capital, six people were killed in multiple attacks, while three others died in the northern provinces of Kirkuk and Nineveh.
Also in north Iraq, a series of 11 bombings in the ethnically mixed town of Tuz Khurmatu killed five people, four of them members of the same family, and wounded 11.The blasts targeted homes belonging to ethnic Turkmen.
The town, which is also populated by Arabs and Kurds, lies in a stretch of territory that Kurdish leaders want to incorporate into their autonomous region over the objections of the central government.
Insurgents often exploit poor communication between Arab and Kurdish security forces to carry out attacks in the area.
