Attacks around Baghdad and north Iraq left 33 people dead on Wednesday, including 18 members of a family killed by militants, the latest in a nationwide surge of violence.

Attacks around Baghdad and north Iraq left 33 people dead on Wednesday, including 18 members of a family killed by militants, the latest in a nationwide surge of violence.

The unrest came a day after a wave of bombings targeting Baghdad and shootings and bombings elsewhere killed 61 people.

Authorities, meanwhile, announced the arrest of an alleged senior aide to Izzat al-Duri, the highest-ranking member of executed dictator Saddam Hussein's regime still on the run.

Wednesday's violence struck towns on the outskirts of Baghdad as well as several other cities in the north of the country, with the deadliest attack occurring south of the capital.

Shortly after midnight, militants bombed adjacent houses belonging to brothers in the town of Latifiyah, which lies about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad.

A total of 18 people were killed, including five women and six children, and a dozen others were wounded, according to an army officer and a doctor at a nearby hospital.

Separate attacks in Besmaya, Iskandiriyah and Tarmiyah, also on Baghdad's outskirts, killed nine people, including seven soldiers.

Bombings in two cities north of the capital killed six people, including five policemen who died in a suicide car bombing against a police station in Mosul, one of Iraq's most restive cities.

The latest bloodshed came as Baghdad was still reeling from a wave of car bombs the previous evening that killed 50 people, while unrest elsewhere left 11 others dead.

Among the attacks was a car bombing in the central commercial district of Karrada where four storefronts were badly damaged.

Workers were still picking up the pieces from the previous evening's violence on Wednesday.

At one restaurant, where windows were completely shattered by the blast, three men were consoling each other as they tried to clean up the aftermath of the attack.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Counter Terrorism Service announced the arrest of Hussein al-Khazraji, who security forces say is a top aide to Izzat al-Duri, Saddam's vice president.

Saddam's Baath party has said Duri, the king of clubs in the US deck of cards showing the most-wanted members of the now-executed dictator's regime, died in 2005.

But audio messages have been attributed to him in recent years and he is accused of orchestrating violent attacks.

Although attacks have killed more than 3,900 people since the start of the year, officials have vowed to press on with a campaign targeting militants that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki says has captured 800 fighters and killed dozens of others, as well as dismantling training camps and bomb-making sites.