Death Toll Rises as Bloodshed Spreads in Iraq BAGHDAD - A series of attacks left at least 14 people dead in Iraq on Sunday, officials said, in the latest violent episodes of a particularly bloody month in the country. Iraq has been hit by a wave of bloodshed that has resulted in the deaths of about 300 people in the past two weeks, raising tensions between the country's Sunni minority and its Shiite-led government. The surge in violence has been reminiscent of the sectarian carnage of 2006 and 2007. The deadliest attack on Sunday took place in the northern city of Mosul, where a car bomb exploded at a house early in the morning while a joint army-police unit was conducting door-to-door searches. The blast killed three police officers and one soldier, a provincial police officer said. Twenty people, including four civilians, were wounded. Also in Mosul, the police said, militants killed a police officer in his car. In addition, the authorities found a body in the Tigris River; the victim had been bound and shot at close range. Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, is a former Sunni militant stronghold. In the Kazimiyah district of northern Baghdad, militants in a speeding car killed three civilians and wounded another, the police said. A police officer was killed in another attack, in the northern Waziriya neighborhood, when gunmen in two cars fired on his vehicle, wounding a colleague as well. In the Qahira neighborhood of Baghdad, militants with silenced pistols shot and killed a secondary school teacher, two police officers said. The motive behind the killing was not clear. In the western province of Anbar, the birthplace of the Sunni insurgency led by Al Qaeda in Iraq, three soldiers were killed and five were wounded in two separate roadside bombings, police and army officers said. Such attacks have diminished in Iraq since the height of the insurgency, but a recent increase in violence, coinciding with Sunni protests against the Shiite leadership, has raised fears that sectarian killings could gain new momentum across the country.